The Bechdel Cast - Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Caitlin and Jamie's spidey senses started tingling, so we decided to unlock a Matreon episode on Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse! For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast. Follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP on Twitter.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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if movies have women in them. Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands or do they have individualism the patriarchy's effing vast start changing it with the bechdel cast jamie caitlin when you get knocked down you have to get back up again you're never gonna kick me down i get knocked down is that what you're saying i know what you're talking about but you set me up for it no and i'm glad you did that thank you hello everyone my name is caitlin

durante my name is jamie loftus and this is the bechdel cast our show where we where we analyze movies through an intersectional feminist lens using the Bechdel test as a jumping off point. You're damn right. We'll tell you what that is in a moment. Today is a special episode because we are releasing an episode that we recorded for the Matreon. Yes. I think like four years ago. Yeah. I mean, we,

and you in particular, we're very pumped on this movie, as was the world, as will the world be again, which is why we are unlocking our episode about Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse ahead of the sequel, which if you don't know, if you live under a rock, no judgment,

Patrick Starr. which if you don't know if you live under a rock no judgment patrick star um sorry i'm in this i was watching spongebob this morning okay brag i mean literally lives under a rock it's commentary um so patrick star probably doesn't know that the sequel comes out this week and we're very excited to see it so we wanted to unlock the episode yes so yeah this originally appeared on our patreon aka matreon which hey if you like this episode you can pop over there five bucks a month two bonus episodes a month and it's been going since 2017 gasp gasp and this one was from may 2019 it was one of my birthday episodes that year so if you hear references to it being my birthday throughout the episode that is why but also it's kind of always my birthday also your birthday wasn't that long ago so let's we're going to continue celebrating and observing your birthday

thank you so much we also talk about in this episode how alfred melina is not in the mcu and how that's a crime oh good catch because at the time of this recording he was not in the mcu but then but then spider-man no way home comes out well well well which is about a different spider-verse than the miles morales spiderse, according to the movies, at least. I don't know what happens in the comics. But Alfred Molina, we are proud to say, is now in the MCU. He's MCU canon. And honestly, thank freaking God.

It's about dang time. So that's been, you know, one of the few things Marvel has done right in the last couple of years is finally formally induct Mr. Alfred Molina into the MCU. So, yes. Remember, this is the past. These are versions of ourselves that are simply so stoked about Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse. And we were right. But things have changed and they've actually gotten much worse. So just keep that in mind when you're listening to the episode we have no idea how bad things are going to get and so in that way it's kind of a window to the past um it is true but we're very excited to share it with the main feed um we're obviously very pumped for the new movie we will

very likely be covering the new movie on either the main feed or the matrion down the line but yeah we wanted to to celebrate um so happy summer and please enjoy this episode on spider-man into the spider-verse please enjoy but also i guess first we should say what the bechdel test is which we didn't pass when we were talking about Alfred Molina, except that we did make the rule that when we talk about Alfred Molina, it does pass. But if you've been with us for a while, you'll know that it passes on a technicality. However, however, normally, the Bechdel test, which is the media metric that we named the show after even though we talk about so much more but the Bechdel test is a media metric created by queer cartoonist Alison Bechdel sometimes called the Bechdel

Wallace test it first appeared in her comic Dykes to Watch Out For as a bit and also I I want to do this more but just to shout out the context in which it appears in the comics because it's um two queer women talking about how when they're watching a movie and two women appear on screen and they talk to each other if they're not talking about a man these characters in the comic strip kind of ship the two women together because there was so little and still is so little queer visibility on screen. Yeah. So that is the context for the Bechdel test. The version we use, there are many versions. Here's ours. Two characters of a marginalized gender must have names they have to speak to

each other and their conversation has to be about something other than a man and we really like it when it's a nice substantial conversation and not just a how's the weather gail it's good betty although that's iconic i mean that's that i should write an entire script around that conversation alone yeah it should be called how well not until the strike's over baby which we will be talking about on the matrion this month a little uh peek into some bonus content coming up yeah but yes we uh that that is what the Bechdel test is it's especially during the month of June pride month um I'm glad that it's something that we're we're talking about the specific context yes indeed so with all of that in mind please enjoy this unlocked Patreon aka Matreon episode on Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse. Anyways, welcome. We're talking about Into the Spider-Verse today. I'm excited. Caitlin,

I mean, I think if you're familiar with our show, you know what your history with this movie is, but why don't you recap it well i did see the movie five times in the theater i mean it's no me and i tanya but it's pretty impressive wait how many times did you end up seeing i tanya nine oh my god i was really into it there is i have this very cursed screenshot of like the two months i was signed up for a movie pass and it's like nine itonias and then an unsubscription once it was out of theaters oh my goodness wild but five times is is like intense yeah you're you stand this movie i really do yeah and then your history is uh i just saw it for the first time i didn't i simply didn't see it in theaters because I was too busy watching my DVD of I, Tonya, at home.

But I mean, I am a fan. I'm a longtime fan of Spider-Man. Sure. I think it's really the only superhero I've ever been a fan to the point where I would like go keep up as best I could. Yeah. I think a lot of that does have to do with alfred molina to be honest obviously because now that i'm saying i've kept up with spider-man i haven't seen the new ones and i didn't see the andrew garfield ones so i guess i really am just really just a big

alfred molina as gawka i did like the sam raimi trilogy and i don't know why i didn't keep going with spider-man but there was a while like in middle school where I'm like, I'm into Spider-Man. Well, the Amazing Spider-Man's with Andrew Garfield are skippable. They suck, right? Yeah. But then the new reboot that's part of the MCU. People love. Yeah, I really enjoyed the first one.

Okay. People, I mean, I hear new Spider-Man rules. I just haven't seen it yet. But this was like, I i mean this is like right up my alley i love i love cartoons i love experimental cartoons i love phil lord i have a huge crush on phil lord yeah so i was i just saw it i really like it and i'm excited to talk about it yeah phil lord is is he hot oh let me get you a visual sorry shimmy more is he hot oh let me get you a visual sorry shamik more is also hot yeah there's a lot of hot people involved in this movie actually it's uh it's actually a little bit upsetting um okay why

can't okay not to dump on christopher miller but that's not who i'm trying to look at yeah i don't know what they look like he's hot he's a bit like he's hot like they're they're we're getting a lot of subpar comic-con pictures he's hot okay the thing is yeah he's hot he's hot okay you know good for him but let's talk about the movie yeah love it love it so much there's so much to love about it the animation style is so it's incredible yeah the i mean the story the characters the soundtrack is awesome it's funny it's funny the movie does a really good job of balancing like heavy emotional beats with like humor there was one twist i legitimately did not see coming was it the uncle yes i didn't see that coming i didn't either

this is like these movies are hard to at this point because there's 500 million superhero movies it's hard to not see something coming like that was i was very pleasantly surprised and then like really sad i knew like once he comes out you're like oh no he's gonna die man cool uncle and then i cried i cried like during three different parts of this movie when i first saw it by myself on thursday night of opening weekend and then oh the other the doc ock reveal i didn't see coming the doc ock reveal i think i did but only because you told me about it. I knew that Doc Ock was a woman. I knew that Doc Ock was a woman. Yeah.

And then it was like, well, this is the only woman in STEM we've seen so far. So, yeah. Oh, I like the reveal that Aunt May is a woman in STEM in this one. You're just like, sure right there's a lot of this movie where that in a very pleasant way i was like yeah of course sure nick cage is in it sure i'm fine with this whatever it's it's so fun and yeah and you And you never see a movie this diverse in the normal MCU or really in any movie at all. So I'm like really glad that this was this movie rated PG. Yeah, PG. Yeah.

So, I mean, it's like that's the perfect like audience for this movie and like the audience that both wants to and needs to see like a cast this diverse and funny and cool so i'm i'm super psyched that like a ton of people got to see it and was and it was really successful it like won all the awards it was financially successful and uh amy pascal produced it love her emails every time we bring it up every time pascal's in the ring we got to bring up hashtag her emails sure if you haven't read amy pascal's emails boy oh boy she is not a fan of angelina jolie oh i haven't i guess i haven't read them oh she was like the sony email hack that was like i remember that but i don't know the content of them, I guess. She really said some funny, mean things about Angelina Jolie. Anyways, let's talk about the movie.

Yeah. Okay, so the recap is we are introduced to Spider-Man. He's given a voiceover. He's like, look at me. Here's my comic book. I'm the only Spider-Man around, and I'm cool, and I love being Spider-Man. I'm blonde. here's my comic book i'm the only spider-man around and i'm cool and i love being spider-man and is that is and that's okay first of all you knew you saw i was triggered by blonde spider-man or any blonde adult male sure and he's the first spider-man is voiced by one of the chris's

chris pine what is he in the other ones he is he in he's not in marvel he's the only one he's the only chris he's in dc he's in yeah don't don't do that you just bait and switched me i knew every actor named chris was in one of the universes that's the law i was like how could he be breaking the law okay chris pine yeah is steve in wonder woman yes got it okay i'm good to continue Okay, Chris Pine is Steve in Wonder Woman. Yes. Got it. Okay, I'm good to continue. I don't know why you're yelling at me on my birthday. Okay.

It's not your birthday. Also, Post Malone has a large role in the movie. He's a huge plot point, yeah. This is the movie that made you a Post Malone fan. It's true. It's true. Yeah, we meet this blonde Spider-Manman and then we meet miles morales he is going to middle school private school in brooklyn he likes art he likes post malone he loves post malone he doesn't know the words to

the song he chats with this girl in his science class. Whose name is Gu-gu-gu- She calls herself Gwanda. I don't quite know why that happens. I don't know why she doesn't just say my name is Gwen. Because he wouldn't know who Spider-Gwen is. Well, but there are Spider-Man comics in his universe. So maybe the character Gwen Stacy exists. Maybe.

But also it's like if you if i meet someone named gwen i'm not like you're a fictional character like that maybe she seems like maybe she's not giving him enough credit right i guess that though all those comics do because we see imagery of the comics and he has them so i'm'm assuming that he would know who Gwen Stacy was, but why would he think that anyone named Gwen was Gwen Stacy? It's just automatically her. So you think she's really underestimating his intelligence. Yeah, I guess that clears that up. Okay, so he talks to her.

He goes to his uncle's apartment. They go into an abandoned subway line. Right. And then. Oh, he's got a cool uncle. And you can tell he's cool because he's not in a committed relationship. And he has a punching bag in his studio apartment. I love how cool aunts and uncles are like just visually established in movies it is always if if any of

our listeners have any good examples of like cool aunts and uncles and their sweet apartments it's always it's basically always their apartment right we were just like oh this person answers to no one they've got framed posters like cool aunt and uncle shit. Oh, yeah. Right. Okay. So, cool uncle. Cool bachelor uncle.

They go into this abandoned subway line area and paint some graffiti. And this is where Miles gets bitten by this crazy looking spider. Yeah. Cute spider. It's very cute. It's a spider 42, right? Yeah. yeah it's a label i'm sure that's a reference to something and i don't know i have no idea what it is so he gets bitten by this spider and then the next day he wakes up he feels kind of weird he's like did i go through puberty my

pants don't fit i'm sweating a lot you've seen it in five different movies he's spider-man but he's confused he doesn't know it yet the webs are come but you can't say that ever in the movies except only in the james cameron script oh god the iconic james cameron script where he explicitly says it's come yeah if only and then he bumps into guanda or wanda whatever he thinks her name is from class played by hayley steinfeld and he gets his hand stuck in her hair and he's like what the what am i spider-man or what and then he goes to investigate what's going on goes back to the old subway sees the spider and he's like wait a minute this is not normal and then while he's there he discovers actual spider-man he's fighting

the green goblin the green goblin is not william h macy in this world yeah it's a literal gobliny giant goblin kind of just like a robot-y kind of guy right like he looked like a robot no he's not the robot oh he's like just this like giant reptilian monster with like a tongue that he's more like abstract i mean he's like more like an actual monster yeah than like a man right who's dressed up like a monster yes and then miles and spider-man cross paths and spider-man's spidey sense goes off he's like wait a minute you're like me i can show you the ropes on how to be spider-man let me just go destroy this big collider machine first and defeat this bad guy named fisk hell yeah but then before all that can happen fisk powers up the super collider that opens up all these... Oh, I love vague science.

Yeah, no explanation needed. Nope. Oh, it's Willem Dafoe. What the fuck am I talking... Sorry. What did you say? William H. Macy? I said William H. Macy. Oh, I didn't even catch that. I confuse Willem Dafoe, William H. Macy, and Steve Buscemi constantly. I mean, they all are like character actors

who... I feel like they audition for the same parts a lot. Probably. William H. Macy though is like, he's got like a kind face and then Willem Dafoe always usually plays a villain because he's got like a more sinister look about him. Isn't William H. Macy in trouble because of that whole

college admissions scandal? Oh, yeah. I mean, his wife. His wife. I don't know how complicit he is in it i guess it depends on actually it's kind of a lose-lose because if he's not involved that just means he's not very involved in this children's lives so if he's a bad father maybe he won't go to jail sucks love how the world works oh wild anyways so fisk powers up the Collider, which opens up all these different alternate dimensions. And then Fisk kills Spider-Man.

No. And then the bad guys spot Miles, who was like lurking nearby, and he has to make a run for it. And then one of the bad guys, whose name is, I think, Prowler, goes after Miles, but he manages to escape. And he's like, okay, fuck fuck like i i have to be spider man the other spider-man is dead like everyone's counting on me i have to assume this role but he doesn't know how to do it he's like complicated jumping off of buildings he he breaks the thumb

drive that the other spider-man had given him and he's like i don't know if i can do this but just then another peter parker shows up whoa whoa what i know this one is jake johnson yes yeah and he is the amazing spider-man ever heard of him he right so he's from this alternate dimension. He is older. His life is in shambles. He's divorced from Mary Jane. He's got a dad bod. And we love that for him. Yeah, we do.

Now, this Peter Parker is reluctant to get involved, but he eventually agrees to team up with miles and then they go to alchemex which is like the science lab that is responsible for creating the collider and they need to go there they have to download like the schematics or something so they can destroy the collider and then that's where we meet doc Ock aka Dr. Olivia Octavius not Alfred Molina I know but he'll we've gotta we gotta get him in the MCU folks there's a place for him there sure it breaks my heart that he's not canon I know I'm so sorry I truly anyone else in the Raimi Spider-Man movies don't care don't need you there yeah but if anyone has the gentle heart of Alfred Molina as Doc Ock rehearsing for Fiddler on the Roof I mean I swear to god did you see that video yes oh great everyone tagged us in it as if you weren't the person who brought that up on that episode oh I know we're just like um um, hello. Oh, God. What was it? Blank check? Yeah.

Yeah. And, you know, people just like don't listen to me. I'm so sorry. Anyways, let's go. Well, it's not your birthday. It's mine. It's true. No one is listening to me today. Okay.

So they have downloaded this stuff from Alchemix and Doc Ock is there. And also the person who's there is Gwen, who we learned what her actual name is. Yeah. And she's another spider person. No way. From yet another alternate universe. It's so complicated. I know.

And so they team up with her. Yes. And this is where I stopped writing down what happened so now i'm just going from memory baby okay i mean you've seen it 900 times yeah yeah i'll help i'll help okay great so then they go to aunt may's house sure do and aunt may's lily tomlin mm-hmm uh so that's great. We love that. We love that. Her nephew, Peter Parker, is the one who had just died. So they're like, hey, this is weird.

Our condolences. Also, we're from alternate universes. Can you help us out? So they go into like the spider shed. And she's like, hey, meet these other spider people and this is when we meet spider noir spider ham and penny parker who i don't know what her if she has like a spider name i don't know i think she might just be like a but let me check let me check i'll i'll research cool so we meet those spider folk and they're great they're all animated in different

styles this movie's so cool it's really exciting and then they're all kind of figuring out okay we need to stop fisk and his collider but we need to get you spider people the big square guy he's played by leave schreiber uh-huh got it yeah so they're trying to figure out okay someone needs to stay behind and turn off the collider after we've gotten everyone to their respective alternate universe and miles is like well i should be the one to do it because this is my dimension i'm already here i'll be the one to stay behind but he's not good at being spider-man yet so they're like we don't really trust you to do this right oh she played penny parker slash sp dash dash dr oh is that the name of her robot i guess like the robot that's an extension of her yeah okay spdr got it so miles is like fuck i'm I'm not a good Spider-Man yet.

And he leaves and broods a little bit. I mean, he's a teen. That's the best part about Spider-Man is he's moody. Yeah. And then I think it's around this time that he discovers that his uncle is actually the Prowler. The Prowler. Yeah, I was not aware of the character the prowler before this me either i don't think he's introduced in any of the other spider-man movies so thank you spider-verse didn't know who prowler was and you know i guess he's dead now yeah

oh yeah before that there's a big fight in aunt may's house where the bad guys are trying to get the thumb drive back aunt may is also not the helpless aunt that she is in earlier incarnations of spider-man she is keeping the spite because in the world that aunt may is and in miles's world peter parker is dead and she's mourning him but she also has this spider bunker where she does fucking science shit and it's great it's great yes i loved that so yeah they the bad guys come they fail in getting the thumb drive back and then prowler dies because fisks shoots him. And it's really sad. It's sad. We cry. I know. It reminded me of The Lion King. Oh, with Mufasa?

Yeah. Yeah. Where the kid's just like, I'm sorry. I'm really emotional. And then the dying adult is like, it's all good. You're awesome. And then dies. And then Miles Morales goes and finds timon and poohba right

and then he grows he comes of age with that crazy that nathan lane nathan lane as much as i love john mulaney john mulaney is basically doing an impression of nathan lane for this character yeah i think i think he sounds super i mean he kind of naturally kind of sounds like nathan lane too sure i think for this character especially I'm like oh he's good there's some serious Timon vibes ironically coming out of this pig character commentary

because wait Timon is the meerkat the meerkat wow how smart is John Mulaney I'm going to a 5 000 word piece on medium about like the brilliant subtlety of john melanie's performance as spider ham the world needs it okay so then story what happens in the story after this so the uncle has died and then miles is sad about it there's like this emotionally heavy moment between him

and his dad or there's a wall between them and then the spider people come back and they're like hey okay we're gonna go do this thing because again you're not a good spider-man yet and now you're like an emotional wreck right too and there's that great scene where he's like you don't get it and they're like they all list the critical person in their life they've lost because that's the story right and then he's like oh i guess you do get it understand and then they trap him in webs and then the monologue that his dad gives sort of empowers him to be the great man he's destined to become the power of the love between father and son frees him from the cum webs and he and he goes and he saves the day

yep so he goes back to aunt may and he's like i'm ready to be spider-man she's like great here's a suit here's some tools like i'm still a scientist she basically is like um the what's that lady who's edna in the incredibles except not annoying because she's just like oh right she's because edna is a woman in stem but they try to make her just seem like she's a costume designer that's right and she's also voiced by brad bird so that wild. What a time to be alive. Can I, can I do a little industry insider talk? Please.

Okay. So I was at the Annie awards this year where spider, where spider verse one fucking everything. Awards are animated. Yeah. It's like the animated Oscars. It's very boring, but I was excited. And,

uh, so spider verse like completely swept and like one, every feature category. brad bird was there um because i think he assumed that incredibles 2 was gonna sweep oh sure and um he looked really pissed where i'm like it's just the annies like it's not a big deal but he lost and he worked hard for it but i lost why wese was better. Why we should have talked. Oh, yeah. What were you there for? I was nominated for a show I worked on. Hey, what show is it?

Do people want to watch? Hey, everyone, log on to Facebook.com and watch a show called Humankind Of. It was a great series, and it almost won an Annie, and then it was canceled because life is unfair. But I think, you know, I can relate with Brad Bird in a lot of ways we're basically the same person didn't you also see Alfred Molina there I did see Alfred Molina there and I was too afraid to talk to him that is really exciting this was after you had met him yeah after he was on our podcast literally two weeks later and I was too scared and he a day later i got another message from him not like a direct message no he went in to record the robot chicken sketch that i wrote for him last week and they

were like guess who wrote this and he was like oh my gosh she's all over the place she's starting she's starting to creep me out she's really closing in isn't she um anyways all right so what happens in the movie though i don't know okay so so he escapes because the power of love he goes to aunt may he goes to ma gets his web shooters and then he's ready to go and be a part of the fight he meets up with them in like the it's basically trump tower vortex yes so there's like this benefit going on fisk is trump he's got the tower to prove it and everything and below that is where the collider is colliding and then you know this the spider The spider gang is fighting Doc Ock and the other bad guys. And then Miles shows up and he's like, I'm ready.

I'm here. Let me help. And they're like, oh, my God, you're doing such a good job. And then the spider people return to their respective dimensions. And so it's up to Miles to beat Fisk and shut off the Collider. And he does do it. And then his dad is there who had feelings of animosity toward the idea of Spider-Man.

But he's like, wait a minute. Spider-Man's actually a good guy who wants to do good things. Right. And then the one thing that i was just like where when miles finally calls his dad and they very quickly brush over his uncle's death where right the dad is like hey i don't know if you know this but something with your uncle and then miles is like i know and he's like oh okay why are you coming home like maybe that is how men process

death i don't know seemed pretty chill to me yeah it was it was and then miles fully embraces his new identity as spider-man and that is the end of the movie. Woof. It's such a good movie. I love it so much. I really, really enjoyed it. Let's take a quick break and we will come back for the discussion. Hey everybody, this is Matt Rogers

and Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful.

Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh, my God. I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know. I'm so behind.

Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke. And on camera, yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bj good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Ludi.

Not hawk the slalom. I absolutely love it. It was somehow Shakespearean when you said it. It was somehow gorgeous. Yee, my slok, you hollum. Listen to Las Culturistas on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote.

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who on October 16th, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate. My name is Manuel Delia. I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere, a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman Wikileaks. Tia exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into

a mafia state. And she paid the ultimate price. Listen to Crooks everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts to listen to new episodes one week early and 100% ad free subscribe to the iHeartTrue Crime Plus channel available exclusively on Apple podcasts and we're back um where to begin with the discussion i think it's interesting i mean if we're just starting off from i mean we've already established it's like it's the most diverse inclusive superhero movie i've ever seen i mean probably aside from black panther but aside from black panther i mean but

in terms of seeing like and this is like a noah criticism of black panther but you're seeing all types of people in spider verse where i feel like it's the only like the thing that hit for me is like this is the only semi realistic portrayal of like the makeup of New York City. Oh, sure. That I've ever seen in a movie. And it's a cartoon. Yeah. Like the all white portrayals of New York City that we've come across in every rom-com we've ever covered and other movies like in action movies too but just the all white New York that

never existed that is so persistent in movies because of systemic racism uh but but it was really cool to see um such a like a diverse cast where you have like a lot of people of color do we i don't i guess there's a pig there's uh do you are there any queer characters in this not identifiably so or even i think coded that way so it's it's a pretty but then there's no real sexuality at all to speak of i mean it's not i mean there is a little bit of a love story that is and i want to get into that right but um i have a few gwen thoughts but yeah in general like it is so cool to see new york look like new york miles has his mom's last name his name is not miles jefferson yeah it's miles morales and we

know what hit like we know what both of his parents do we know a lot about his home life and you know when even when people of color are the main character you don't often get to see their home life when i'm thinking of fucking the craft, sure. Where the only black woman in the cast is the only character you find out nothing about. And it's also cool to see like a working class family portrayed on screen because that doesn't, you know, it's like there's all these really famous and sometimes even good kids movies

about vaguely wealthy white kids that live in gigantic houses and have never had a problem and then they get magical powers you're just like okay um but my i mean his mom is a nurse his dad is a cop yeah um and his dad's name is jefferson davis which is the same name of the only president of the confederate states during the civil war which a lot of people have pointed out. They're like, that's weird. But that is his character's name.

That can't have been an accident. And I'm very confused. Yeah. So I didn't hear his full name said out loud. I didn't realize that he had his mom's last name. What a strange thing. But I mean, his parents are together. Yeah.

I guess we don't know if they're married. Do we know that they're married? I don't know if they're married uh do we know that they're married i don't know if we know they could just be together yeah they might just be partnered but yeah either way miles has his mom's last name she is latinx and we see them speaking spanish together like it's rare that we see spanish spoken by a main character yeah in any movie really unless it's like a spanish language film um and not have it like be super called attention to like it's yeah or the natural landscape right or like yeah othered in some way where it's like oh the others are speaking spanish but we here in America speak English kind of thing. So like, yeah, it was like very normalized and very cool. Which again is New York.

Exactly. Like there's so like there are so many, which is why it's like, you know, Miles Morales taken the time to portray right in a way that isn't patronizing or half-baked or shitty um so i love i mean i love the family's setup i i mean there's always gonna be a weird feeling i feel like at this cultural moment of being like i guess we like cops in this movie um but that is that is how the story goes i feel like that is also kind of like baked into superhero lore as well in a way that's kind of hard to escape or hasn't really been addressed and this is coming from someone who doesn't know the deep history of superheroes but like superheroes i feel like are generally portrayed to be like allies to cops i think so some superhero movies just sort of ignore that

like law enforcement exists at all the other one that makes law enforcement seem stupid so and then superheroes are smart the other main series that integrates police to a large extent that I'm familiar with is Batman. And the cops in that one are always like, he's a vigilante and I don't like it. And then there's always like Commissioner Gordon, who's like his one ally. And then all the other ones. Yeah, there's a lot of like good cops uh in across superhero narratives but it but it does sort of go the same way where the end end scene even though there's like another level to it because it's literally a father and son talking but it is like spider-man is an ally of the nypd okay

but that i mean he's kind of like that in all the iterations of spider-man i feel like in the sam raimi ones the cops are made out to look kind of just like less competent than spider-man and like jealous of him yeah i think that's right it's been a while since i've seen any of those ones but yeah i think so anyways someone link us to what i'm sure is a very well written essay about how the mcu superheroes relate to the cops but again it's like seeing a working class family from new york portrayed on screen in a way that is realistic like their apartment is realistic versus like the wide open spaces oh my god like the million bazillion dollar like soho lofts that you see in like all these or like i'm thinking of like like carrie from sex in the city would literally be starving

to death if that were made realistic like she writes one column a week right like you can't afford to live hunt like you can't you're waiting 45 days to for your freelancers check to come in anyways love the the setup and the the visibility in terms of like race and class especially because like miles is like he's basically a socialist or he's like i don't want to go to this school it's elitist like i want to go to my public school well what it's referencing is like the real setup of new york schools that is like very, it's the way public schools work in New York is weird, where there was like a, an intensely reported story about it that came out a couple of weeks ago, that basically, there are these like magnet schools that are publicly funded, but are kind of like elitist, that it looks like the school that Miles gets transferred to is based on, and the way that you get entry into one of those like public plus schools is by taking a test and the dad references,

like you test it in. So people take the test and then they're put into a lottery because there's only so much space, but there's still a lot of systemic racism in the way those schools are sorted and like all these magnet schools are supposed to be this big public win for public education and there's almost no black and latino kids who get out of the lottery as it were huh that's fucked so that scene was i was just like oh whoa like someone did their homework on new york public schools because he's walking by his old middle school which seems very diverse yeah and then

you see the scene where he's you know entering this magnet-esque school and it's fancier predominantly white yeah and it's yeah like there's uh i believe it was a new york times story that came out by the time you hear this will come out about a month ago but it's a fascinating look at how like these public systems are established to be for the greater good and yet are still so very racist and not inclusive at all god damn it any other thing you want to say about that in terms of like diversity inclusion oh uh no i mean i think that that is like this move in addition to just being a good movie like that's this movie is like great strength and distinction from the landscape it it comes out in i mean it's really

this movie and black panther that you get any level of diversity. Right. That isn't extremely tokenized. Definitely. Yeah. Yes. Huge strength for the movie. Woo.

Let's talk about the women. Let's talk about the women. It takes a while for this movie to include women in the plot in a meaningful way, I thought. Yes. Because I think for the first half, unless I'm missing something, you meet a mom. You meet someone that is introduced to us as a love interest, because that's originally how Gwen Stacy is introduced in all of these stories. Yes. And eventually, I feel like it's not until you get to Olivia Octavius

that women become a structural part of the plot. Agree. And it takes a while for us to get there. Yeah, at least a half hour, if not more. Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. Up until then, it's just, know scenes with you know him and his dad or yeah him and acting with the spider-man running away from the bad guys and i do think

that it's and i i don't want to be too critical of this movie because i i like i really love it and i'm excited to talk about the relationships between men that I thought were really cool in this movie. But it does it, you know, you do kind of notice and it sort of betrays the fact that this was written by men and directed by men. And it was directed by Amy Pascal's emails, of course. She never, her emails never get credit for directing movies. They're sentient. Her sentient emails from 2013. Directed so many movies.

But yeah, I mean, the main focus, even within the family, is there's a lot of screen time devoted to Miles' relationship with his dad. There's a lot of screen time devoted to Miles' relationship with his uncle. There's really not that much of Miles and his mom. We know what she does, which is more than most movies give us but there's that's not where the emphasis is and definitely dynamic the only thing we really see is a scene where like she's doting on him right before he's about to leave for school that's really about it yeah there's so much more like precedes a long scene with miles and his dad yes and yeah so that like that scene in a movie with a lot of strengths you're like oh man i mean i've given this a bit of thought and on one hand i'm like yeah why couldn't we see a more significant

and like more emotional impactful storyline between him and his mom and it's only really given to him and his dad and then also him and his uncle which you know means that less time and attention is devoted to the mom character right but also i mean you know he's a i know i don't want to like sound like i'm defending you know the absence of women in a story and i've never been a 13 year old boy so i don't really know but i think it kind of stands to reason that like a boy of that age is going to look up to the male figures in his life and you know try to learn from them you know learn how to be a man and all this stuff which can be problematic but the fact that at least his dad is a very supportive figure in his life i just think that there's and i guess

this this is i mean for everyone who's gonna I mean this is a matriarch episode so we can actually be more critical without being afraid of people but I mean there's a version of this script where instead of creating this uncle figure to become you know who is like this positive influence in his life and teaches him the lighter side of life and how to have fun and that, you know, his dad is, you know, the sort of rigidity of his dad isn't the only way to live could be played by his mom, instead of like creating a third, another male character to fill that void. But that said, I mean, or an aunt, or not, right, right. Like it's I don't think that those nest. But then I don't really know because one of the things I do like about this movie is it

allows male characters to be vulnerable with other male characters in a way that seems pretty healthy and productive. And that is something that I think young people and people in general should see where there is like such a strong like it's like part of the core relationship of miles and his dad that his dad is like i love you say it back like which you don't see between fathers and sons a lot right in movies because there's you know that cultural sticky thing that we can't seem to get rid of his webs oh his way his cum webs there's this cultural cum web that like men can't express their emotions to each other right and that

there is something wrong for a man to tell another man that they love each other they're I feel like there's so many examples of me growing up where my male cousins my male friends when they were talking to other boys they would couch everything really nervously and no homo oh sure they would right like where they would just like there's that association that any guy expressing affection or emotion at all to any other guy that isn't like anger or making fun of women was inherently sexual yeah and this movie or just like a sign of weakness kind of yeah totally and and so in that way like miles's relationship with the adult men in his life is good and is good to see because you see miles you know tell his daddy loves him and watch that relationship change over time and and you see

the closeness of the uncle and the nephew that is like I just wish that we got more of the mom I don't know yeah I think maybe a better version of this is if uncle Aaron was actually aunt Aaron aunt Aaron E-R-I-N and then she and miles's dad are brother and sister the same twist can happen and we know that women can be villains in this world because we see doc ock well maybe that's too many female villains that well that's the other thing but then we have female superheroes exactly so it kind of balances out and then and then if we have a stronger relationship between or just a little bit more screen time devoted to Miles's mom, then we get the balance of like, oh, like there's not just all the women in his family are evil. He's got a very caring and supportive mother.

And that could be accomplished in a scene. Like we just had one scene that was just the two of them that had an impact on the plot and wasn't just like oh his mom because i feel like that's how mom characters are used a lot where even if you do get a scene with them it rarely results in any plot happening it's just sort of like well he's loved an easy fix could be because we get a sense of how how miles's dad doesn't like you know the vigilante superhero that is spider-man yeah if we see a scene where his mom is like oh i actually think spider-man's cool and well she's she's a spider-man stan what yeah what if she has like spider-man merch and stuff yeah everyone does in this oh my god this the the the spider verse that actually sounds like the

collider i don't know if if you listeners can hear that they for sure anyway so that would impact the plot because a lot of his kind of internal struggle comes from his dad not liking spider-man he likes but yeah like miles already likes spider-man it seems like every kid likes spider-man so like what if miles's mom likes spider-man and that's something they could bond over right or mourn over because when he dies in the sure in miles's there's more ways to include her and i love i love the idea of an aunt instead of an uncle yeah i was also very sad when the uncle died anyways if you're listening phil lord well phil lord is like wait a minute someone said i was hot better tune in yeah please everyone at phil lord and let them know how

i feel yeah yeah i know i i agree with you even though i mean it's i loved i love the family story and i love how much i love the family stuff i wish that women had been included more meaningfully in the family stuff agree that's all i think the same could also be said for the spider team i agree wow i completely agree i think how many people are in, people, animals, are in the spider team total? Is it like eight? Six. Six? Two are women.

We've got Gwen, Stacey, and Penny Parker are the women. We've got Spider-Man. We've got... Six Spider-Men. Not dead Spider-Men. Six Spider-Men, yeah. Spider-Noir, Spider-Ham, Miles. Did I list all four just there?

I'm very distracted by the collider. Men outnumber the women. And there's only two people of color. Well, I guess we don't technically know Spider Noir or Spider Ham, but they're voiced by white men. Yes. So it is like two out of six in terms of women to men and people of color to white people or at least actors right and this is

probably like an adaptation issue where there weren't like other comic series written with a woman as the lead because they they pulled from existing characters and i think it kind of shows in a way that like i don't know how that's avoidable because it's like yeah peter parker has been a white kid or adult for a long until miles morales right so that like it's kind of hard to navigate around that and the same same thing, I mean, one of the problems that I had with Spider Gwen is she's presented very classically feminine and her, I mean, everyone's costume is different, but hers is different in a very particular way. She has a purple pinky streak that goes behind her.

And it's not that there's anything wrong with that. And it's so hard to like have this conversation in a way that doesn't seem like we're demonizing traditional femininity like right if that's your thing who cares it's my thing a lot of the time but it is like the standard way that feminized characters right it's like put a bow on them make them pink and suddenly they're a woman right and they're like it's girl spider-man i would also argue that her fight choreography and the way she moves is ballet feminine it looks like ballet a lot and she even says at one point like when they're all grilling miles and they're like can you punch a bunch of bad guys can you rewire a fucking mainframe blah blah blah uh

gwen asks can you fight with the grace of a skilled dancer or something like that so she's all about like this what appears to be like a very feminine fight style which we've talked about in other episodes i mean it sucks um but all the same the women who do exist within the spider team are just as competent of fighters as all the men for sure and they're doing equal work they're doing equal work penny seems to have like a specialty relating around some sort of computer tech girl yeah i'd be interested in what our um our japanese american listeners thought of her portrayal because it did seem like there were a lot of stereotypes being put into, like, she comes out of this, like,

anime-like world, which I don't really know. Like, I just, like, don't have the perspective to have a strong opinion on that. But I could understand why people would have a strong opinion about the way that, like, this is the Japanese American American spider woman and she's portrayed in a very particular way. Just like the American spider woman is portrayed in a very particular way that I don't really care for. Right. Yeah. I am similarly curious as to what listeners think about that. Because I was like, that is like a lazy choice.

But I also I mean, I'm sure that that is an adaptation issue as well. I'm reading on wikipedia.org, I've never heard of it, that I guess that Penny Parker, they definitely wanted an Asian American spider person. I guess they considered using another spider woman who's korean-american named silk okay but they decided her powers weren't as cool and they went with penny that's like bring them both in bring them both in what's stopping you again it's an adaptation you can make changes from the source material i feel strongly about Spider Gwen with that, especially like they did not.

It was not integral to the plot for her to look move like that. Right. Yeah, exactly. That said, she does save Miles and Peter Parker from Doc Ock. She does. In the beginning, but then she needs to be saved at the end. She was like about to fall into like the collider beam and then miles has to jump in after her and save her so but at least it's like kind of parody in terms of like women not constantly being damseled yeah i mean

i feel like this is like it's so weird how things change slightly over time because the way she's written i'm like it sounds like a woke dude wrote this character and they like tried their best they're like we're not gonna damsel her constantly but there are still like little things so you're just like i just wanted to fix that where you know like there there there is that implied flirtation between her and miles the whole time and thank god they didn't i was really worried they were gonna try to shoehorn a kiss in at the end same they don't but they it's they're setting up a kiss at some point in the future perhaps yeah although i mean the way he talks to her for the first time is is because like he wants like his uncle said put your hand on a girl's shoulder.

I'm like, oh, that's how we knew he was a villain. But he's like, put a hand on a girl's shoulder and like be smooth. And it's played in the movie like, oh, he's just an awkward teenager. But it's like, no movie, come on. That's something that could have been so easily done differently or had her call him out more about it because what happens in the movie is he got cum powers now right so he's a little bit sticky sticky and so he's trying to impress gwen he's hearing his thoughts out loud he's freaked

out he remembers his uncle's advice to like put your hand on a girl's shoulder to be cool and he does that to gwen and his hand sticks to her hair because of his spider cum and then he basically starts whipping her around with his hand and she's like ow fuck and then you cut to she has to get a haircut because of sticky hands and he says like nice to meet you and we're supposed to be like teehee but he doesn't apologize um and he doesn't ask her apologize for their cum no they don't ask her. And he never apologized for their cum. No, they don't. They just put it wherever they want.

They literally do. It's disgusting. It's horrible. It stops now. But I mean, and he never asks to put his hand on her shoulder. And I think if he had, she probably wouldn't have said yes. Right. I mean.

Based on that conversation. Yeah. and I think if he had she probably wouldn't have said yes right I mean based on that conversation yeah there is there's a whole scene where uncle Aaron is basically teaching Miles how to you know give what's probably usually an unwanted touch to his peers and process of wearing down is sort of being described so yeah we can see that as oh that's gross that's a gross thing to teach a young boy yeah i guess the fact that it ends horribly is but it doesn't though because she still wants to be his friend and they still end up being like bffs and he never has to apologize and i just feel like i it's not the worst thing in the, but he doesn't apologize and she ends up having a crush on him anyways. I don't think she has a crush on him. I think she sets some pretty clear boundaries.

But I'm also really bad at identifying romance when I see it because I just don't understand. I would be really surprised if they made another one of these movies and that didn't continue and intensify. I would be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't happen. Because, I mean, yeah, that is, I think that is probably the way it's being set up. But also, I would argue that the language that they use is like, I don't really do friends anymore. And he's like, well, if you decide to do friends again, like, I could open up a spot for you. Like, it's always in terms of like. I know that he, like, if you decide to do friends again like i could open up a spot for you like we it's it's always in terms of like he like accepts your boundary yeah i just i don't know i think that like saying that that their relationship isn't flirtatious in nature like it so is at the

beginning yes i would i i feel like i don't know toward the end i feel like it's strictly platonic but again i'm maybe just not reading that right. I guess I just disagree on that one. Yeah. And I just think that that's kind of a waste of Gwen's limited time on screen is having a flirtation. We've seen that in Spider-Man a million times. Don't need to see it again. Didn't need her.

I mean, I guess they both rescue each other so it kind of evens out but just i just wanted a little bit more for the way gwen is portrayed and then for uh for penny parker just to see more for i feel like you see the least from her out of everyone her in noir yeah you sort of see the least of well the three like spider people who are introduced later on i'd say they're all equal parts not that important right but penny's computer friend breaks at some point i'm like i don't care but i'm sad yeah it did the movie did make it seem like look how sad we all are uh this and we, well, we didn't really get to know Penny's character, so I'm not very emotionally affected by that. Right.

Yeah, it does mean that the one woman who is a person of color who belongs to the spider gang doesn't get much attention paid to her. Right. So that's the spider team.'t get much attention paid to her right so so that's the spider team that's it and it's also i mean i was reminded of the avengers in this where there is like an ensemble team of superheroes but the men are largely driving the story the women don't have their own movie this is miles's movie and you know hopefully maybe we'll get off like a penny parker spinoff or a gwen stacy spinoff but maybe i mean but the main focus of the friendship inside of this spider team is peter parker and miles morales yes that is the core friendship and i think if we look at the friendship between peter parker and miles morales

and the friendship between gwen stacy and Miles Morales there are some gendered differences but the friend I mean the friend between Peter and Miles like I don't really have any issue with it I think it's like a cool example of things I wish we saw more in like female driven narratives of mentorship, because that is like the key to anything happening is. And so it is cool to see it. Like both Peter Parker's take on miles as a, you know, student kind of in this like almost karate kid kind of way of like, they teach him the ways of the spider and the calm webs and

they sort of form that teacher mentor relationship and then you get the natural end of that relationship which is like the student has exceeded the powers of the teacher and the teacher must learn to let go and then he does and he goes back to being thick Spider-Man in normal Spider-Man world. Or I guess original Spider-Man world. I mean, well, that is weird because he goes back to a world where Coca-Cola is called Coca-Cola. The world that Miles lives in is called Coca-Soda. So it's like it's not quite our universe. It's a little bit.

There's also a Seth Rogen movie. I don't know if you caught that. No. Right when all the spider people like bounce into Times Square from their respective dimensions. Seth Rogen exists in every multiverse. You see a poster for a movie called Hold Your Horses. And then it says like starring seth rogan glad that seth rogan got an appearance in his 500th movie this year i'm exhausted yeah anyway let's take

another break and we will come right back hey everybody this is matt Rogers. And Bowen Yang. We've got some exciting news for you. You know we're always bringing you the best guests, right? Well, this week we're taking it to the next level. The one, the only, Catherine Han is joining us on Lost Culture East. That's right. The queen of comedy herself. Get ready for a conversation that's as hilarious as it is insightful.

Tune in for all the laughs, the stories, and of course, the culture. I feel some Sandra Bernhardt in you. Oh my God, I would love it. I have to watch Lost. Oh, you have to. No, I know, I'm so behind. Katherine Hahn can sing. Oh, I'm really good at karaoke.

And what's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love really good at karaoke. What's your song? Yeah, what's your song? Oh, I love a ballad. I felt Bjork's music. I just was like, who is this person? I got to hawk this slalom, Lugie.

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And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered. There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.

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available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. And we are back. Can we talk about Octavius? Yeah. I liked her. We don't really know that much about her personally um her friends call her live her friends call her live that's basically all i mean she's an ambitious woman in stem who hates spider-man which i think we're sort of just taking at face value because we're like oh doc ock always hates Spider-Man right where uh if we go to the Alfred Molina interpretation please of Doc Ock you know like it's first of all I'm I'm not saying that Katherine Hahn did but you know we the golden standard has been set sure and no one can reach

it except for our friend for letting him reprise the role, right? But I do think that there is a distinct difference and maybe there just wasn't the real estate and the filmmakers are kind of assuming like, well, you know, he's, or she in this case, like Doc Ock hates Spider-Man. Duh. But in Spider-Man 2, 2004,

we find out explicit reasons why Doc Ock hates Spider-Man. And there is more of a relationship between Doc Ock and Spider-Man. And we find out about Doc Ock's personal life. In a kind of like fridging, in a definitely fridging narrative of his wife. His wife gets killed and he's tortured by his own technology and he's possessed by his own technology and there's there's just a lot there i performed beautifully and well i like olivia octavius she fills the role a villain needs to fill i don't she's not characterized nearly as much as like fisk is as Alfred Molina's Doc Ock.

But I guess that's because... Or is the... What is the name of the uncle villain? Oh, the Prowler. The Prowler. I feel like there is a version where you can almost write Octavius out of this version. The reason she needs to be there

is because she has the technology to build the fucking whatever that makes the multiverse the collider but outside of that what purpose does she serve in this world besides to carry out the scientific task because i feel like prowler gets all the parts of the of a villain that we really like which is like personal connection to the protagonist a struggle between the two of them like things they have in common things they don't have in common and that just doesn't exist for octavius at all we're just like doc okay spider-man and so she hates all the spider-man yeah so i feel like that there is i guess we're just we're so used to doc ock being like a crucial player in the Spider-Verse because of what we've seen in Spider-Man

2 in this thing she carries out that very specific function of having created the Collider and that's all we but the other two villains we know a lot about their personal life Fisk we know his wife yeah and his son and how he lost them and ego and all that shit and he's a big square and he's sad we know all that we get that in the flashback sequence with prowler we know who he is to the protagonist we know why this relationship is difficult and why it's so sad to lose him but it's i feel like they kind of were like all female ruben of doc ogg and then just sort of didn't do anything with it like we don't know anything about her well we don't know anything about i don't know is his name scorpion or something there's another villain who's like in the bad guy gang who we know

next to nothing about and then like the green goblin we don't know i think it feels like she's just sort of like an ancillary character who is familiar to us so we're like oh we know her i mean i know what you're saying and i do i just feel like it's kind of corny to gender swap the, to make the move of gender swapping a character and then not doing anything with it. Sure. Especially if the original character was so deeply characterized.

It almost feels like a, we gender swapped it so you wouldn't see it coming kind of thing. It did feel like kind of that corny where it's like movie twist where they're like the like i mean if we go if you go further back enough like the doctor was a woman like that kind of like you're supposed to be like oh that's not alfred melina i assume well that there's a line in the movie where Peter Parker is, God, this fucking is so distracting.

Relentless. Yeah. Where Peter Parker is like laying out the plan whenever they get to Alchemax. And he's like, all right, step one, infiltrate the lab. Step two, find the lead scientist. Oh, they do do that. And then Miles is like, that's the lady. And Peter's like, oh scientist oh cool he's like

i need to re-examine my personal biases because you just assumed that the scientist would be a man didn't you peter well i mean to be fair in the jake johnson peter parker universe doc ock is alfred molina uh so we have to assume that that cartoon Spider-Man knows Alfred Molina personally and maybe even saw him perform Tevye on Brother. I mean, probably, yes. Probably, yeah. I mean, I don't really have anything to say about the Doc Ock character other than, like, it was cool that they, you know, like, I don't think there's any ethical issue with them gender swapping that character. It just felt like it was done in lieu of, you know know she's supposed to be a more prominent villain than the scorpion guy like we don't know anything i feel like we almost don't know anything about

the scorpion guy kind of for a reason but you know she's the first villain that we really meet yeah in earnest and a big deal is made of her reveal and then we just don't and then my friends call me live right yeah well more a little more on that is that we've talked in various other episodes on action movies where there seems to be a trend where men who are usually the heroes the action heroes when they're fighting there's usually not women for them to fight they're usually fighting other men yeah and if they are fighting women they're always like can i hit a woman even if she's trying to kill me and so yeah we've had different discussions on various episodes about that there tends to be this thing that's like, well, so that we don't have to even broach this subject,

let's just make sure that men are only fighting men. In this movie, Doc Ock poses a serious threat. She is trying to kill the spider people. She has these mechanical arms that can cause a lot of damage. And we understand that she's a dangerous adversary we see men fighting her punching her in the face you know like and it not being a gendered thing it's being a fight right movie yeah and that is cool and the way and in sort of in contrast to our annoyance with how Gwen's fighting is stylized.

Doc Ock's stylizing isn't, you know, femmed up. No. In any way, nor is her costume. She's basically wearing the same thing that icon Alfred Molina wore. I mean, a long coat. A trench coat. Yeah. Listen, Doc Ock wears a trench coat.

That's canon. If you don't like it, watch another movie. I don't know what to say. It's a trench coat movie. Yeah, I just wish that there was more there for her. We just don't know how Doc Ock feels about Miles Morales. We just know that she hates the entity that is spider. She'll kill any spider person.

So I did find it to be... Which is the prejudice there against spider people come on why are we talking about this what is going on with the octopi and the spiders they both got eight legs they find some common ground god maybe that she's like i'm the only eight-legged creature eight leg yeah so screw you that would be a wild storyline yeah so i just you know i just only want that movie where it's like octopus why can't all the eight legs get along that's a good i mean plenty of two-legged people can't get along so wow caitlin a deep a birthday lesson a birthday lesson from our gal headed into her jesus years she started to really impart some

i'm 30 bitch i'm 33 you really have to start giving some christ-like insights this year oh my god cool anyway um aunt may was one of my favorite surprises yeah in the movie of like it's hard not to be critical of the way that character is written in the original story where she is just a nice old lady and we love that for her but she's completely weak she is right i think in multiple movies she is damsel oh yeah stolen by you know captured by the villain she's damsel by by Alfred Molina no he has that great anecdote about that scene where I guess they were on set and he was holding her in his claw and she's you know like the actress was older and she was like kind of uncomfortable and kind of annoyed and she just like turned to him and she's just like you know i went to juilliard and he was like oh i'm sorry which is really funny but

yeah i mean she's constantly damseled and or just sort of like oblivious a lot of the time where she doesn't seem to get why aren't you home and is so is so i mean even if you compare her to uncle ben in the sam raimi movies like uncle ben was at least cogent and and knew what was going on but like aunt may always needed peter's help whether it was financial whether it was to save her life like she was very rarely to uncle ben dies before anything happens. But we, I mean, we get to know uncle Ben a little bit in the first movie where he's,

he is like very masculine and more, it seems more involved in Peter's like formation than aunt may is, or that's what's like implied. Um, and then, and may seem sort of like, and, and there are moments where she gets to, you know, do her thing.

But, you know, she's a grieving wife. She's a maternal caretaker and she's constantly damseled. But in this version, watch out, baby. She's a scientist who makes spider weapons. And that is great. I'm like like i almost didn't really need to know that much more because it and you get that cool moment where in aunt may's universe peter parker is dead and in peter parker's universe aunt may is dead yeah so they're both seeing each other but not and you're like oh that's nice and then she's like anyways spider lab yeah she's

she knows exactly what's going on she's like let me guess you're from another dimension let's go let's deal with this shit she's almost like fucking michael caine in batman where she's just like badass older person who has all the gear what is his name the butler alfred alfred not to be confused with alfred molina we should do the batman movies at some point that would be fucking what a trip that would be oh i should have mentioned this earlier but in the newer reboot of spider-man with tom holland the version of aunt may that we see in those movies is she's hot that's her thing she's played by Marissa Tomei and it's important that you know that she's hot and that is I like this choice way better god sometimes with these movies like superhero movies in particular you can just like

hear the executive focus groups just like just like totally miss really like no no no what if aunt may what if you are a fucker you're like no that's what are you talking about there's so few roles for older women um anyways i loved lily tomlin's aunt may character totally got like she's not a main character not a lot of attention is drawn to her i think for plot reasons but they just like that's good adaptation is like taking a character that people are familiar with and like turning them up and modernizing them and making them cool and useful to the plot yes so i liked that agree mary jane's there she's still his wife in this one yeah yeah we don't see a ton of her what happened to her theater career oh yeah she is it fucking fisk tower at that benefit dinner

and it's like can't you see that that guy is mean yeah i'm like you were spider-man that would be like house that would be like if she went to like donald trump trump's house so yeah she's kind of i mean it makes sense that she's sidelined but but there there is a version of that character where they could have done something cool with her like they did with aunt may and didn't just present her as like grieving lady with nice hair maybe you will see some of that in a sequel perhaps uh let's hope so i mean you don't hire zoe kravis for no reason right right she's great i love her well i think that was about all i had to say about one of my new favorite movies i thought this movie was an absolute blast and is some of the best the best you're gonna get in terms of representation um in a modern movie it's i

thought it was weird that there wasn't any space made for a queer character where there are so many characters it's not a particular i mean it's not a romantic movie but it would have it just seems like i mean if there's future installments this is a very inclusive movie and that's in the dna of what the movie is so like you know make a little more sure oh that reminds me the one of the very few things that we do know about mj in this universe is that she voted for donald trump peter b in addition to that at least for peter b parker's uh mj jake johnson jake johnson she wants children so she's given a very maternal thing. And he's like, oh, and that's why our marriage fell apart, because I wasn't ready to have kids.

And then by the end, he's like, wait a minute, I'm proud of Miles Morales. Maybe I do want children. Oh my god, my spider cum loaded. Let's make spider man. And, you know, having children is great. Let's perpetuate the species. But that's the only thing that we know about we don't need any more white women who voted for donald trump reproducing okay thank you but yeah other than that it uh it does a fairly good job at least compared to

the spider-man franchise as a whole. Are they knocking down the apartment? They are hurting someone? I do not know what they're doing over there. Again, listeners, apologies if this has been an annoying episode to listen to because of the machinery that's happening next

door, but there's simply nothing we can do about it. There's nothing we can do about it there's nothing we can do about it this is listen tell your friends to keep pledging to the matron and we'll get a mansion olivine okay yeah we'll all find some secluded house in the hills we should get a tree house we should get a really nice tree house that That seems realistic. Someday I think I want to aim to afford a tree house. We need our own spider shed.

We need to just dig. They don't charge to dig. That sounded like a crazy conspiracy theory. Your eyes went wild. Wait a second. We just need to buy a five foot square foot plot of land and start digging.

All right. Well, that was that. Hey, what about the- You can dig under other people's houses, right? And then just like- They don't know. I don't know. I've been reading too much about the Denver airport.

Is this the ground zone for that? What if an earthquake happens? I don't know if they can- Can you legislate? Yes, you can okay but you know i think that there's some i'm gonna start tunneling yeah you're gonna get into everyone should look up conspiracy theories about the denver airport i i can't stop thinking about it yeah there's tunnels wow yep hey does this movie pass the bechdel test? I thought it came close, but I don't think it does.

Do Gwen and Doc Ock ever exchange words? Not that I noticed. And Gwen and Penny Parker also, I do not believe, interact. Rats. The only conversation that I noticed was where Aunt May says, oh, geez, are those sweatpants referring to Peter Parker's sweatpants? And then Gwenwen says yep that's what they are but they're talking about peter parker's clothes peter parker's body um

it does not kind of objectifying him which actually is like that's what we should be doing it is it is nuts to me that this movie that is so like progressive fails this very easy metric and this is not what the kind of movie where you're like, well, like in this case, I don't think the Bechdel test is a flawed metric at all. Right. We have a lot.

And I think that that does speak to how underdeveloped some of these female characters are and how one dimensional they are and how they're, I mean, I feel like the main thing with Bechdel with the Bechdel test is that it really, if it doesn't pass, it identifies how a movie is using its female characters. It's either that they're not there,

like Star Wars, the first one, or it's if you have a lot of women and it's still not passing the Bechdel test, then they probably only exist in relation to the male characters or they're tokenized. And I think that that is kind of how this movie works where Gwen and Doc Ock are active characters that are within most scenes with

them the only woman present yeah um or there's a lot of women who exist only in relation to men you've got Miles's mom you've got Fisk's his wife um you've got I don't I don't really know where Penny Parker I mean she's just we just don't really know anything about her. Right. You would think she and Gwen would at least have some small exchange. I mean, they're all working together toward the same goal. And then you would also think that Aunt May and like at least Gwen would talk a little bit more. Exactly.

Or May and Penny Parker. Or I mean, Gwen, yeah, because it's like when i think gwen and aunt may that is like the scene where two women are in the same scene for the longest and not fighting so that there's plausible there'd be some dialogue between them yeah uh and it just simply doesn't happen uh also there uh if you if you run the numbies on this progressive movie only 21 of cast and crew members were women and 11 of key cast and crew members were people of color shit shit indeed well it goes to show that we still have a lot of work to do yep i do encourage our listeners and and us because sometimes i think we slip on this to also be looking at who is behind the camera because this movie is a very male dominated production crew and

very white dominated production crew and the cast is is fairly diverse but behind the scenes not much diversity you got amy pascal and her emails which identify as female yeah um so unfortunately there are still not a lot of people of color or women in key roles so still majority white guys it should be said that the movie is directed by three dudes one of the directors peter ramsey is a black man and also was the first black director to ever be nominated for best animated feature oh cool just really cool yeah um but you know percentage wise still pretty i mean i'm kind of like that's pretty abysmally bad 11 people of color especially when in this the in the first like afro-lutino luchino spider-man current like 11 it's just higher yeah i think and hello it's caitlin and jamie from the future we've learned so much so we wanted to redo our nipple ratings for

this movie because again we've we've grown we've learned and when we originally gave the nipple rating for this movie it was before we were taking like a more fully intersectional approach to the nipple rating so i would like to amend the ratings that we gave and i wouldn't but fine no i i uh yes this is the right uh thing to do and also it's just uh another time to write about the spider verse because it comes out so soon yes indeed and so we are here to give our updated nipple ratings. The nipple scale, of course, being our perfect, amazing, incredible metric. Iconic, nothing like it, never done before, won't be done again. Truly. And it works like this. We rate on a scale of zero to five nipples based on looking at the movie through an intersectional feminist lens. As such, again, I deeply love this movie. It is one of my favorites of all time. It has so much going for

it. Superhero movies are usually like the most popular and highest grossing movies that come out in any year, but they still so often center whiteness and center men. And it's still like very much out of the norm for that not to be the case, which is not the fault of this movie. But I remember the original conversation around this movie being like, wow, can you imagine? And at the time, many people could not, which is depressing. And before this movie came out i remember there was there was a lot of discourse about like can we have a black spider-man and um glover was in the running and then that didn't happen to the upset of many people but uh studios are cowards and they didn't do it anyway.

So this movie coming out in 2018 felt like a big win at the time and it still feels like a big win and I love it. And I hope to see more diversity in obviously all movies, including superhero movies. It is a story about fathers and sons. But it's not against the law. Yeah, it's not against the law. Just because it happens every single day doesn't mean it's always a bad thing. And what I appreciate about this one is that the main arc of the father-son subplot is

two male characters needing to learn to open up and express their emotions to each other and to show affection and vulnerability with each other. They obviously still have a ways to go on that journey but it's nice to see that dynamic explored in a father-son relationship yeah and i also appreciated that i also like that um by the end of the movie like their relationship is it isn't like movie fight of like and their relationship is totally repaired and everything will be great from here on out like it's incremental and i'm excited to see how that you know what what motion there is in future installments right and it seems based on the trailers again at the time of this

recording we have not yet seen across the spider verse but it seems getting great reviews getting great reviews it seems like women do play a more integral and active role in this movie based on the trailers it feels like there might be more of a focus on miles's relationship with his mother yay which is one of the grapes yeah our number one criticism of this movie yes so that's exciting uh seems like we get even more female spider people in this one spider women seems like you get more female villains in this so it just feels like women are more meaningfully included in this movie that's coming out. I'm excited. But all of this in mind, I'm going to give the movie four nipples, which is a pretty significant bump from what I had given it originally. Maybe it's just because this movie keeps growing on me. It's not perfect. There are

some, as we discussed, there are some things but it's nice to see that. I mean, and again, we haven't seen it. But yeah, I noticed that as well, where it seems like the franchise is becoming even more inclusive as it continues. And I'm excited about that. Who are you giving your nipples to? I'm going to spread my nipples out between miles his mom spider gwen and you know what spider ham wow it's a nipple yeah iconic um i'm gonna i'll meet you at four and i'll leave it yeah i'll meet you at four because i do i mean i was revisiting this episode as well and you know points were made uh I think that this movie's great strength is it's a beautiful beautiful coming of age story that's

inclusive it is like this has nothing to do with the nipple scale but it's like one of the most beautiful animated movies ever made truly um and I just love it very, very much. And I think you put it very beautifully. I think the only other thing I would want to point out is behind the scenes stuff. And I know we talked about this in the original episode. I think there was more room for inclusivity behind the scenes. Definitely. There are a lot of white guys behind the scenes. And it's very heavily men.

And I actually haven't checked out i know that there's a new crop of directors for this uh next installment i think because directing one of these movies basically kills you um yeah but um and and so i i haven't looked into that um and i'm i guess i i guess i suppose i'm excited about it. I don't know. Whatever. No. But I really. This movie is so beautiful. And as we now know, extremely rewatchable. And I think it's just like a great introduction to superhero movies for kids.

For sure. Yeah. I'm so excited for the new one. So, Four Nipples. Let's see. I'm going to give one to uh miles obviously uh i'm gonna give one to spider gwen i'll give one to miles's mom i'll give my last one to uh lily tomlin aunt may because i love lily tomlin aunt may she's great she's great also i feel like we should give an

honorary nipple to alfred melina i okay, let's toss in another one. Figure it out, Wikipedia page. And yeah, that's us from the future. That was our unlocked episode on Spider-Man Into the Spider-Verse. Hope you enjoyed it. Hope you enjoy the new movie if you're planning to see it. I know I am going to see it i know i am gonna see it six times i saw the first one in theaters five times and i have to break my record you gotta top it you can top that

i just know it i can't wait to see it i'm gonna see it with my brother this week oh yeah but yes thank you so much for listening again if you enjoyed that looser discussion that is an unlocked patreon aka matreon episode which you can go sign up for right now over at patreon.com slash bechtel cast that's five bucks a month and you get access not just to two new episodes a month with caitlin and myself in the looser discussion format you'll also get access to nearly 150 back catalogs because we've had the patreon for for many years wow brag us wow wow wow and you can find our merch at tpublic.com slash the bechdel cast grab a t-shirt or whatever you want to do follow your heart we trust you and uh we can't wait to talk to you about the next spider verseVerse movie. Whee! See you next week.

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