The Big Picture - ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ | Marvel Month

Episode Date: April 24, 2019

‘Avengers: Endgame’ is just days away, and with that comes the final installment in our Marvel Month series: ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming.’ We discuss our relationships with Spider-Man as a cinematic figure, Tom Holland’s portrayal of a character who hadn’t been quite nailed down by other talented actors like Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, and where the character is headed as the Marvel story drifts further into space—decidedly different than the high school setting of this film. Host: Sean Fennessey Guest: Adam Nayman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Big Picture is brought to you by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. If you're ever stopped at a railway crossing and the signals are flashing and you don't see the train, or it looks like it's moving slow and you're thinking maybe you could get across the tracks before the train comes, think about this. In 2018 alone, 270 people were killed at railroad crossings. 270. Stop. Trains can't.

Today's episode of The Big Picture is also brought to you by philo philo has over 50 of your favorite channels like the food network amc mtv lifetime and history enjoy live and on-demand tv plus unlimited recording for only 20 a month with no contract needed philo is available on roku ios fire tv android TV, Android TV, and Apple TV. So start your free trial instantly with just a phone number. To start that trial, visit philo.tv backslash big picture. That's philo.tv backslash big picture. I'm Sean Fantasy, Editor-in-Chief of The Ringer, and this is The Big Picture, a conversation show, at least for the time being, about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am joined today by your friendly neighborhood film critic and Ringer contributor, Adam Naiman. Adam, hello, how are you?

Hey, how you doing? Adam, you are friendly and neighborly because we are here to talk about a movie called Spider-Man, colon, Homecoming. This is a latter-stages MCU entrant, and an unlikely one, largely because, for the longest time, Spider-Man was just not. This is a latter stages MCU entrant and an unlikely one, largely because for the longest time, Spider-Man was just not a part of the MCU. And when this movie happened, it was a surprise to many. And the fact that he was integrated so effectively into this universe makes it kind of a fun movie to talk about because it fits into the big picture and a lot of the things we've been discussing throughout this Marvel month. But it's also just a hell of a fun standalone movie. When I reached out to you a couple of weeks ago about participating in this project,

this is the movie you chose. And I thought that was so interesting and you never told me why. So why do you want to talk about Homecoming? I thought it would be just really good and confusing to talk about Homecoming in the shadow of the other pop cultural product called Homecoming. That's true. Came out this week. I thought that'd be really fun. I thought we were talking about Beyonce. No, this is perfect for SEO. This is great. No, I mean, I like talking about this film because I think it's a strong one.

I wrote about it for The Ringer when it came out and thought that everything you said about it sort of returning Spider-Man to the intellectual property fold was something that it kind of allegorized itself in a very clever way. The whole movie is sort of almost about like Spider-Man trying out for the Marvel Cinematic Universe and trying out for the Avengers and trying out for the audience. And so it has that self-reflexive quality and it's not obnoxious. Like most of the time, it's quite clever. I sort of thought there was something about it. I mean, all the Marvel movies, and you can tell me what you think of this, they have to have all these surface differences and all these surface peculiarities and idiosyncrasies. But underneath they have to lock together like a puzzle or Voltron.

Like you can't really make one different. And so this one kind of has the friendly neighborhood surface and the outsider surface and the underdog surface. And I found that all all very charming and pleasant. And then the fact that it really is just a piece of product that locks together to the rest of them, in this case, didn't bug me the way that it maybe bugs me with some of the other ones. Yeah, even just revisiting it this week,

I found myself surprised that Chitauri alien technology was a significant part of this movie, which is, of course, a significant part of this movie, which is of course a significant part of this MCU and everything that we've been talking about. Because the first time I saw it, I felt like it could have been any old alien technology. It could have been from an Amblin movie in 1987. You know what I mean? Yeah. And you know, you don't really actually need Robert Downey Jr. there. There's pleasure in having Tony Stark there there and john favreau kind of babysitting him and you know the the the parallels it has to the first iron man movie because it becomes a very

different kind of origin story like thank god it's not a spider-man origin like he's bit by a spider and there's and and there's all that stuff but it's sort of about him like becoming an official superhero right and there's all kinds of scenes that parallel the way that same story is told in iron man right up to the ending being kind of a parody of iron man announcing himself to the world whereas you know here peter chooses not to so yeah you don't need all that stuff but um and then the chitauri technology you're right it could be anything but i like a movie that simultaneously stands alone and has these bits of connectivity to the larger story. And I find the way it connects to the larger story in some ways really witty, like the cell phone footage

of the big Civil War fight. Yes. That's really funny. It's clever. I think of this movie more like an induction movie than an origin movie. And I think one of the things that has happened over time with these Marvel movies, because there have been so many and we are in 20 plus territory, that people are completely exasperated by origins, but they're not exasperated by the idea of seeing people together and inducted into this process of team up. And sometimes the team up feels forced and hacky. And I think in the case of movies like Thor Ragnarok and in Homecoming, we're thrust into a world with people that we like. And then ultimately you're right, those puzzle pieces do fit together and we see them getting inducted into this grander fight. And, you know, at the risk of

revealing anything, I just walked out of Avengers Endgame and you can see how all the puzzle pieces do ultimately fit together. And that is satisfying in its own way, just given the amount of time spent and emotional time spent thinking about all of this stuff. But this movie, it just has a, it has a charm all its own and it's, it's highly self-referential and it's highly young, you know, in a way that no MCU movie is. It is a teenage movie and it's nodding aggressively at John Hughes movies, though I don't think it quite reaches the heights of some of the best John Hughes movies. You know, before we get too much deeper into Homecoming, though, I wanted to know what your relationship is to Spider-Man, the cinematic figure,

because we're not even at the stage that we were when this movie came out because we've had Into the Spider-Verse released since then. But, you know, prior to this, we've obviously got two iterations of the story, both told with Tobey Maguire and then with Andrew Garfield. So, you know, how did you interact with those movies? Did you care for those movies? Did you have any investment in them as a teenager from the comic books? I mean, the Raimi films feel in some ways very ancient. And I don't mean that they look

primitive or out of date or that the effects are bad. I mean, they hold up. But just the idea that there was some risk attached to sort of big budget superhero movie making back in the early 2000s, the idea that these were like, how are these going to do? And even the idea that Raimi was kind of an inspired choice, like that just feels very long ago it does i think that you know it feels very long ago i mean even the nolan batman movies which are the next big turn in that narrative like you know it it predates them i mean i i think that the idea of maybe superhero movies taking themselves a little too seriously is partially ramey's fault there's that stuff in Spider-Man 2, which either really works for people or really doesn't. The pep talk from Aunt May and the whole idea that he represents New York and New York pulls together for him,

that stuff was starting to get a little self-aggrandizing for me. And I actually kind of like Spider-Man 3, the goofiness of it, particularly that montage where Maguire's walking down the street, you know, sort of like, you know, looking at girls and being a complete goof when he's turning bad. I find that stuff kind of funny. You mean like funk dancing Peter Parker, that scene? Yeah, the funk dancing Peter Parker. It just reminds me of like Sam Raimi having a sense of humor. I think it's kind of cute. The Andrew Garfield movies, I have seen if a gun was to my head and you said what happened in any of them, I would just, my brains would get blown out over the wall wherever I was. I can't remember a single thing about them. Like literally, I don't remember anything that happened in them. I didn somewhat old because I was a teenager in my early 20s when the Raimi ones came out and the Andrew Garfield movies, whoever those were for, they were not for me.

But I like Spider-Verse, which I think you did too, right? I loved it. Yeah, I think that there's something about trying too hard in these movies that you can sometimes see the seams. And the Andrew Garfield films, you know, he was just on this show last week and we talked about it a little bit. He kind of reflected, I think, on a lot of the, how wounded he was in the aftermath of what ultimately I think is the failure of that reboot.

And this is kind of, sort of a reboot, but it doesn't, it just doesn't make the same mistakes, Homecoming. And Spider-Verse, of course, like just kind of blows up the template for a reboot. It imagines that it can operate completely independently, which I found so liberating

on top of the fact that the filmmaking and the writing and the voice work and all of that was just, you know, in some ways it's probably a little strong to say revolutionary, but I had just not seen a movie like that before. What they also have in common, which struck me when I was rewatching Homecoming, I addressed it in my review, but you feel it too. The two Spider-Man movies are linked in a real attempt to signify a kind of progressivism within them. I don't know if it's something inherent in the character or the fact that they're New York films, but Into the Spider-Verse, I think, is a movie that really means a lot to a lot of people in terms of diversifying the character and the backstory and the identity of it. But if you rewatched Homecoming recently, you surely noticed how much it's doing that or trying to do that or aggressively doing that too in the casting and the makeup and even just some of the background details. Like when he's sitting

in detention, it's under a big poster of James Baldwin, you know, that sort of stuff. I think it's fascinating that those two movies have that in common. Yeah. And it feels like a signal to the MCU to come in part with movies like Black Panther and Captain Marvel and these sort of overt nods to the fact that maybe the MCU wasn't as diverse as they wanted it to be. You know, part of the appeal, I think, of Peter Parker and the character and that story taking place in Queens is that it is a naturally diverse story in the way that it's told. And the kind of experience that a teenage boy is having in that setting is going to be a little bit different from the one that say Thor is having in Asgard. Yeah, totally. And Queens is also, I mean, again, everything about the movie, this kind of recurring motif, whether it's visual or conceptual or geographical, just kind of on outskirts, you know? Yes. Queens on the outside of New York and the climax at Coney Island is kind of on the outside. I mean, just basically,

or even the ferry is in water. Like it's just, it's not Manhattan. And similarly that, that cell phone footage or GoPro footage of this big civil war fight where you see Spider-Man's part in it, the idea of it sort of just being like film from the sideline, right? You know, like he wants the coach to put him in and he's not in for very long.

I like how that's developed in the script and I like how that's developed in the, in the directing. It ties to that idea of the induction movie that you're talking about, but it just uses New York pretty well in that regard. It just doesn't look like the Raimi Spider-Man movies just in terms of the skyline or just in terms of the neighborhoods. And I think that that's a good thing. I agree. Let me give you a few data points about these movies before we go any further. It's directed by a man named John Watts, who had only made two fairly small films before he made this film. He is also directing the forthcoming

sequel, Spider-Man colon Far From Home. His two previous films are called Clown and Cop Car. Cop Car, which is a film from 2015 that I quite liked starring Kevin Bacon. Maybe we can talk about that a little bit here. The writers of this movie are myriad. I think the primary writers are thought to be Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly, who are, of course, are the writer-directors of a movie called Game Night, which was released last year. And also, John Watts has a screenwriting credit, and Christopher Ford, and Chris McKenna, and Eric Summers. A lot of times when you see four or five-plus screenwriters, that is a bad sign.

In this case, I don't know. I think this is a pretty good script. I'm a little reluctant to read the list of stars because there are so damn many. I'm sure you and I are looking at the same sheet right now. And aside from Tom Holland, who we should spend a little bit of time on as our new Spider-Man, we've got Michael Keaton as the Vulture. You know, I gotta tell you, Pete, I really, really admire your grit. We've got Jon Favreau returning as Happy Hogan.

No, put that down. That's worth more than you or me. We've got Zendaya. I can't believe you guys are at this lame party. You're sure too. Am I? We have Donald Glover in a cameo. We have Tyne Daly of Cagney and Lacey fame.

We've got Marissa Tomei slightly youthening the Aunt May role. We've got Robert Downey Jr., aforementioned. We've got Jacob Batalon as his close friend Ned. Laura Harrier, Tony Revolori, Gwyneth Paltrow, Bokeem Woodbine, Logan Marshall-Green, both playing incarnations of the character The Shocker, Cary Condon of Rome fame as the voice of Friday, Jennifer Connelly as the voice of Karen, the AI in Peter Parker's suit, Michael Mando, fans of Better Call Saul will know he plays Matt Gargan, who will ultimately become probably

the Scorpion Hannibal Buress as a gym teacher Martin Starr as a I guess a teacher and an academic decathlon coach

and Tunde Adabimpe of TV on the Radio fame which I don't even remember him appearing in this movie this is quite a weird cast Adam yeah I mean what I love is

Gwyneth Paltrow who has like two lines got fourth billing I mean God bless because she's like like gwyneth paltrow who has like two lines got fourth billing i mean god bless because because she's like a marvel universe og right that's right she has like she has like one scene yes it's fourth billing um you know we were all really wondering what pepper pots was up to and the movie answers and says she's around yes with goop power comes goop responsibility yeah yeah it's a it's a big cast and it it and yet it doesn't it doesn't With good power and background humor. When I reviewed the film, I sort of pointed out, like, this is a Marvel movie that actually gets a fuck Mary kill joke in there when the girls are sitting around talking about Thor

and Hulk and Captain America. And even the Avengers themselves kind of become background details in the movie, like those detention videos with Chris Evans as Captain America. So, like, it feels very populated, I guess, and it feels very vivid. You have this five-minute stretch where suddenly Donald Glover is just there and being very compelling and charismatic in this totally throwaway part. So I think that that ties into the idea of the movie's pace and its speed and its agility. But it's not like an Avengers

movie where like you have like 15 people who all have to have a big significant moment you know it really is it really is driven just by the main character and the way he literally and figuratively bounces off of whatever and whoever the movie puts in in front of him but there's some very decent supporting performances in this I'm sure we'll end up talking about Keaton at some point, but I quite like him in this. I do too. We'll definitely get there. This movie made $334 million in America and $880 million worldwide.

And this is, you know, not too far after. It's just three years since Andrew Garfield's second Spider-Man movie. Essentially disappointed heavily at the box office and people doubted whether there would be Spider-Man movies going forward. That, of course, was a frivolous concern. The runtime is 133 minutes and it is also distributed by both Sony and Marvel. And Marvel getting integrated into the development of this story, along with the producer, Amy Pascal, who used to run Sony, is a pretty significant turn. Because now, in addition to the acquisition of Fox that Disney just made, Disney now holds basically all of the Marvel cards.

And when we look back on this in 20 years, if we still care about this sort of thing, and I suspect we might given how powerful it is, it's going to seem odd that different companies were making different versions of Marvel movies now that it's all going to be under one tent. Sure. This is the moment before Thanos got all the Infinity Stones, but in real life, right? That's exactly right are you are you comparing bob eiger to thanos um sure i've actually i don't know if i've seen a picture of bob eiger recently i don't think he's like 25 feet tall but um you know maybe not physically maybe not physically adam but again just like that acquisitional nature of the avengers films where it's like we got to get

everything and control everything and put everything under one roof like it does let critics and academics write pretty cleverly about what this stuff signifies industry wide. It's like Avengers is like recollecting Marvel's property, you know, and just like, you know, just like put literally putting their fingers in everything.

So that's one thing about this movie that I think makes it meaningful. Now that I think in our writing, you know, that tends to be a bigger concern for me than it is for someone like you. And that's part of why I think this is an interesting conversation for us to have, because I quite liked Homecoming when I saw it. And I can, I see an ingenuity into a lot of the writing and construction and characterization in the movie that is hugely appealing. I remember seeing this movie at a press screening with my wife, who I would not describe as the greatest superhero movie fan in the world, but she popped right out of her seat when it was over.

I was like, that was great. Let's go get a taco. And she wanted to talk about it, which is an exciting feeling. And I think there's another reason that the movie is important, which it did something new. I think a movie that it was this young didn't really have a lot of precedent. Is that fair to say? In terms of just representing a teenage demographic? Yeah, I think in this Marvel constellation where we feel like they have got this stranglehold on popular culture.

Well, again, what I said earlier, and I kind of meant for it to sound not disparaging, but for there to be a bit of cynicism, it's like it's the teenage one. Yes. Right? You know, and I think that the filmmakers' discussion of John Hughes is very earnest. Yes. These movies are all made with incredible care and craft. Like, they can't be made without those things. They're too big. There's too many moving pieces. But, you know, to some extent, what the Marvel Universe lacked was that teenage demographic represented on screen. And Spider-Man fits.

And so the movie really leans into having that stuff. I don't think it's in bad faith, but I also think it's in perfect synergy with these movies literally trying to be all things to all people. And there are enough of them now that they actually can be just about all things to all people. Yeah, I've talked about my young sister on this podcast before. She's turning 16 in one month, and she has been following these movies very closely, and she's a longtime fan of Captain America. But when this movie happened, and I suppose when Civil War happened and Spider-Man first appeared, something changed for her. She had not a person that she was looking up to, but a person that she was looking in the eyes of. And Tom Holland is now the most significant figure for her. And when Infinity War ended and Tom Holland disintegrated.

I don't feel so good. You're all right. I don't know what's happening. I don't feel so good. You're all right. I don't know what's happening. I don't want to go. I don't want to go. Sir, please. Please, I don't want to go. She was distraught, and she sent me a photo.

I was going to say a screenshot. That's how much I live on the internet. She sent me a photo of her reaction after the movie ended, and she looked just like a mess. was just deeply deeply upset and they have definitely spring-loaded a new generation of fans into into into the frame by creating a high school movie and i think it is a little bit cynical in a lot of ways but it's also just very smart and it helps that it's well executed yeah it's very effective i mean one wonders if in 20 years you would just literally be born into marvel family you know it's like going to be it's going

to be a prerequisite for citizenship it's like in starship troopers you can only be a citizen if you see a marvel movie yes but no it's it's it's it it is what you say it is which is it's effective and it's smart and it's also something that by the end of both the ramey movies and i think even at the beginning of the garfield movies it didn't have that certain comic book incarnations of spider-man had which is that you know his anxieties and his worries and his energies are very adolescent right you know we don't have to tortuously go through all the puberty metaphors you have with spider-man which spider-verse dealt with really well i thought much more than than this movie tries to but you know just that idea of like weird powers and fluids and all that stuff.

Like Spider-Man's always been super adolescent. That's how he signified in the comic books. Tobey Maguire was always a bit too old, which is why he, I think, affected the boyishness so strongly. And Andrew Garfield was like, what, like 28 when he was playing that character? I mean, I might be making that up, but that sounds about right, given how old he is now. So in that sense, I mean, it's a demographic dive and it's a smart move, but it's kind of true to some of the real appeal of the character. Like the idea was always that he's a high school student and that he's a school nerd.

And again, it takes seven writers. So as you were saying, often you have or however many writers it is, you're like when a movie has that many writers it sometimes is bad in this case whether they're working as one unit or people are just kind of piling jokes on at different times the high school comedy rhythm of it is usually pretty good i like when martin starr at one point it's like i can't lose a kid on a field trip and then there's the pause and he's like again you know it's funny and hannibal burris just opening his mouth is funny so you know that that stuff all works really well. Yeah, it's a good note in general about how to amplify these movies a little bit. Rather than just cast somebody who is a perfectly adequate and fine actor to read mediocre dialogue, just hire a funny person and let them go a little loose with it,

because that seems to be the lesson here. You know, there's a little bit of a freaks and geeks, Aptovian quality to some of this stuff too. And I think that stuff really works. Yeah, I think so too. And you know, that's kind of in some ways like the whole Marvel experiment really worked because of the first central piece of casting, which I'm sure you've been over already on one of these podcasts, but it's all under the sign of Downey,

right? That, that Downey is such a gifted actor that when he needs to project gravitas or woundedness or or despair he can do it but like he is essentially buoyant funny wisecracking almost like talk show host levels of quickness and the whole marvel brand i think is made in that that that image that version of tony stark and maybe one of the reasons i like this movie is because of how it uses downey almost as a kind of wink to the audience or a guarantor to the audience. It's like, I'm around, I'm babysitting. It's not really my movie, but I am like the quality control filter for this movie. I'm like a living, wisecracking quality control filter. You're in good hands. I think it uses them really well that way. Yeah, the co-writer Jonathan Goldstein compared Tony Stark in this movie to Ethan Hawke's father character in Boyhood, which I found to be maybe a little bit of a reach. But I do think that there is something authentic about the bond that they're trying to create between these two characters, which follows through in future movies, too.

And I'm not going to spoil anything, but just know that Tony Stark and Spider-Man's relationship is meaningful going forward. And they don't sell us out on stuff like that. They don't just use Tony Stark as a chess piece to get us introduced to Spider-Man and then vanish that relationship. A lazier franchise would probably just be like, okay, we did that and now we don't have to worry about it anymore. No, and I mean, again, it might be because we're talking about Downey as the one father figure. Because this version of the story does away with the whole Uncle Ben pathos stuff, right? So, you know, you have Downey as one stand-in for a kind of absent father, and then you have Keaton as the other. And the way that the movie plays with Keaton's motivations as a villain, I mean, I think are interesting to talk about because he's actually

much like Michael B. Jordan in Black Panther. He's maybe more compelling than the movie can even really accommodate or handle. But I also like the big turn and the twist, which is that, you know, you also come to see him as a bit of a dad. I've seen you around, right? I mean, somewhere we've, have we ever, because of even the voice. He does academicathlon with me. And he's at my party. There's a great party. Really great, yeah. Beautiful house.

A lot of windows. We were there for like two seconds. And he has this kind of girlfriend's dad relationship with Peter too, which is funny and a source of, I think, some actual tension. That most of these movies with these giant world-conquering villains, they just can't have it. They're too big. It's too abstract. Yeah, let's talk a little bit more about Keaton. Keaton plays Adrian Toombs, aka The Vulture. He's a salvager turned arms trafficker after his company is forced out of

business by the government, notably. He uses a suit with mechanical wings forged from Chitauri technology, and he's revealed to be the father of Liz, Peter Parker's love interest in the movie played by Laura Harrier. Director John Watts wanted him to be a, quote, regular guy that differentiated him from people like Thanos and Ultron. Keaton is an interesting figure here because, of course, he's quite consequential in the history of comic book movies, having been the, maybe not the original Batman, all due respect to Adam West, but certainly the most significant movie Batman of the time. What do you think about his subversion here, playing a villain? And also, what do you think about just his general performance?

Not a question of being careful, but if I go off on a, not a Batman, but if I go off on a Birdman tangent, this is going to become a very different podcast. You know what? I hadn't even thought of that, but you make a great point. That is a factor. I'm about as non-sympathetic to Birdman and Ina Ritu in general as possible. I promise I'm not going to hijack the podcast to talk about that. But Keaton does have these two layers, right?

Because in Birdman, whatever you think of the movie, his casting is already self-reflexive. The idea of this actor who's sort of trying to put this comic book incarnation behind him. And then I think Spider-Man is the next logical extension of of that which is it's a return to the comic movie fold but almost as a a super villain who only barely has super villain tendencies or maybe grows into them because of a very regular everyday rage and frustration that he has i just think the character's fascinating the idea that he has this grudge against tony stark because he loses this salvage contract and kind of feels, you know, kicked down and looked down upon. I know when it came out, people were really talking about that character signifying that euphemism people sometimes use in the Trump era of like economic anxiety. You know, this kind of like very frustrated, alienated blue collar guy.

But they play with that in a fascinating way by bouncing it off his fatherhood the cash even though it's hidden the casual reveal of an interracial marriage and that's why we never in a million years as as as as viewers immediately think that he might end up being the love interest's father right i mean it's a it's a, and it's a trick that plays on certain presumptions and prejudices, I think, pretty well, because we see her being collected in Washington by her mom, and the dad's never mentioned. But we also know that Toombs has a wife and daughter. He mentions them. We just never connect that those two family units might join up. It's a really nice hidden in plain sight twist.

And it gives the character that much more dimension. I agree. There was a, I guess, a sort of meme happening when Civil, excuse me, when Infinity War was released, where people would ask the question, does Thanos have a point? But Keaton, when this movie was released, said that he didn't think Toomes was completely villainous and that there's, quote, part of him that makes you go,

you know what, I might see his point. And I think that that's, you know, leading to the economic anxiety issue that you're talking about in the way that sometimes regular people are at the mercy of larger bodies that wield great power. And, you know, I don't think that there are too many people who walked out thinking that the Vulture got a raw deal, but it does make the characterization and the conflict and the stakes of the movie a little bit more interesting than your typical, this guy's looking for infinity gems because he wants to destroy everything, don't you think? Yeah, well, I have a personal moratorium, not that I'm allowed to keep people from making movies. I can only keep myself from watching them. But movies that pivot on the idea that here is a large glowing orb and it will break everything

if used, but also it can fix everything. I know I'm not actually paraphrasing the real plot of any movie, but that's what they all feel like. Like in justice league, there were those three boxes. And once again, my life could depend on knowing what those boxes were called and what they did.

And I would die if someone asked me to, to, to put my life on the line saying those things. And Thanos is like, I believe they're called the Snyder cut. That's my understanding yeah speaking of speaking of uh make america great again you know the the the the snyder the snyder cut and snyder fandom and the weird marshall right-wing aspect of the dc movies versus that liberal progressivism of marvel could could be a podcast in and of itself maybe it will be but maybe it will be um

but you know with thanos it's i mean there's an interesting allegory in the thanos stuff if you want to look at it this way which is america's currently so polarized to stick with the political angle you sort of have two americas each of which wishes that the other didn't exist and thanos doesn't discriminate he's like people on both sides will die. I'm just interested in the numbers, not who makes them up. So I do find the overall allegorical thrust of this Avengers movie and where it's going kind of compelling. But the way that it gets there, this absolute power, and he's the most powerful thing in

the universe, but maybe this hammer, which is also all powerful, can kill him. So let's forge this all powerful hammer. Like my brain just dies when i see that stuff and in and in this movie i like how small stakes it was it doesn't leave new york they're fighting over like a shipment of weapons it's manageable you know it's like philosophically intellectually narratively manageable it never shades over into just apocalyptic mumbo jumbo. I completely agree. I mean, we usually take some time to talk about the film's MacGuffin in this series of podcasts. And the truth is there really just isn't a MacGuffin in this movie. There isn't this glowing orb, you know, in the Justice League movie you're talking about, I believe it's

called the mother box or the mother boxes. And, you know, that's the kind of dumb shit literalism that, you know, explains some of the problems of those films. Because, of course, at the end of that movie, Batman and Superman realize that their mothers share the same name. And so the mother box metaphor is smacking us in the nose. But in this movie, there really isn't an object that anyone's in pursuit of. There is this alien technology and there are these weapons and there is this cargo that you know michael keaton's character is in pursuit of and of course spider-man has all this great technology and tony stark gives him great new suits and we we get to have fun action sequences but there is not there's no

glowing briefcase you know what i mean and then the absence of a glowing briefcase really just uh it makes the movie feel smaller in a good way. And yeah, yeah. Kind of, kind of a little lighter and more nimble on its feet. I mean, it's kind of a movie to some extent that takes the idea of the suit and kind of makes that into a theme,

which is, you know, like Keaton even talked about that when he made the first Batman, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but he sort of said something like, you know, you, you can't let the suit act you.

I forget what Keaton's exact quote was, but like, you know, the same sort of thing Peter Weller said when he played Robocop, which is he was super uncomfortable until he sort of figured out a way to act through the costume. And so like here, Spider-Man's ultimately at his most heroic, or Peter rather is at his most heroic when he's back to his homemade suit, because Tony takes his high-tech suit away from him, like you haven't earned this yet. Whereas Vulture is someone who, you know, really only has power of any kind through his suit. Otherwise he's just like a dad,

you know, just kind of like a, just like a middle-aged paunchy dad. And in that final fight, his suit kind of becomes his, his, his undoing his refusal to take the wings off. I mean,

you can do the Icarus thing with it if you want, but I don't think those seven writers meant that individually or collectively. But, you know, like the suit is what brings him down. I think that there is some intentionality there. It's impossible to know when there are that many writers. It's notable too, because two of the writers who get most of the credit, John Francis Daly and Jonathan Goldstein, were up for directing this film. And I think you can really feel a lot of their intellectual energy in the movie if you've seen their other work. Jonathan Levine was also up for this movie, as was Ted Melfi, who recently made Hidden Figures, and Jason Moore, and Jared Hess, which I think would have been a very strange choice. What do you make of John Watts as a

filmmaker? I know it's often hard to parse what someone is doing and not doing inside these MCU movies because there's so much pre-visualization that goes into it and there's such a there's a tonality that is hard to crack and we've seen it broken in times with Coogler and Taika Waititi but what do you make of Watts in general well when you mentioned Taika Waititi and Coogler I mean this is by no means a majority opinion like I'm only responsible for what I think the way anyone is like I still never felt that that Coogler an incredibly gifted gifted filmmaker and Creed to me is like the best Hollywood popular entertainment of the last 10 years. Like I ride very hard for Creed.

Like for me in black Panther, he kind of almost punched out of the format, but didn't quite. And with, with what TD, like the jokes are very much his and the casting is his again, the surface pleasures, but he also didn't still really find a way to bend the movie out of shape.

These movies just have certain marks that they have to hit. And I'm not trying to be a jerk by saying that. It's what they are. And I think that one of the things about this filmmaker is that he's not even trying to punch out of any mold. He's not trying to bend these movies out of shape. He's just hitting his marks with real agility and lightness and a sense of humor the movie never feels overbearing it's you know it's got nice quick editing soundtracks very clever i mean again i was i'm watching the movie for a second time i was watching with my wife who hadn't seen this and who's pretty marvel averse for the

most part you know we were both just laughing at the use of the Spoon song, The Underdog, over the opening credits. Yes. Which is, like, not subtle, but it's the kind of not subtle that still kind of works, and by Marvel standards, by mass audience standards, by, like, viewing audience of 200 million people,

Spoon is an underdog band, you know? No question. Relatively speaking. The music choices are key in this movie to me because when we first meet adrian tombs it's to the tune of can't you hear me knocking by the rolling stones a kind of classical middle-aged man anthem hard-working blue collar guy anthem then you hear the underdog by spoon which indicates a kind of a youth and a coolness in a way even though i think by the by the metric of cool spoon is pretty down the middle but they are of a youth and a coolness in a way, even though I think by the metric of cool, Spoon is pretty down the middle.

But they are a smaller band and a lesser known band. And that song is probably their best known, most anthemic song. And then when we really kick into high gear with the Spider-Man stuff, it's Blitzkrieg, Bop, and the Ramones, which is a Queens rock youth anthem. And these things are on the nose but somehow they work sure and even if that music doesn't belong to this iteration of peter parker you could argue it belongs to the kind of like um you know urban adventurer new york spider-man ethos right you know like you know in the in the classic spider-man comics relates i guess not the late 60s but the 70s like you know the ramones wouldn't be out of place because you know spider-Man's always made a fetish of its New York-ness, which is one thing that the big DC heroes could never do because Gotham and Metropolis are both disguised New

Yorks. And so they have kind of like ersatz New York type landmarks and ersatz New York-isms. But Peter Parker in those comic books is always like, you know, real places, real locations, real baseball teams, real hot dog stands, you know, real places, real locations, real baseball teams, real hot dog stands. You know, there's that geographic specificity. And yeah, I mean,

Ramones make, make, make great sense for that. And I, and I really do like the montage in this of him doing like pointless neighborhood do goodery. It's really funny. It's easy.

I mean, you know, it's not like a hard scene to direct, but just the scene where he's like helping the woman cross the street and like stopping the guy from getting into his own car. I find that stuff just very enjoyable. Yeah. And I think Holland has a cheery puckishness that is completely appropriate for the part and is different enough from Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield that it feels like we're dealing with a real kid and that's just such a huge element of making this movie successful yeah i mean this is not this isn't germane to the performance in the film but

just in terms of me liking him i think i saw the movie at a press screening a couple of days after the really excellent bit of publicity he had when he did the Rihanna song on the Lip Sync Show. Oh, yes. I don't watch the Lip Sync Show. Everyone just watches the Lip Sync Show on YouTube. But that was probably the most spectacular, and I hesitate to use a word like daring. It's not actually daring or brave, but it was pretty fun to see him do that. This kind of androgynous, this kind of very androgynous, very flamboyant performance. It made me like him a lot.

And, you know, then when I saw the actual movie, I was just feeling very, very kindly and warmly towards him as a result of that. But the performance, as you say, is sweet and modest. And he's just very naturally springy, too. Like, I never believed Maguire's physicality the way I believe Holland's, but I believe he's trained as a dancer, so. Yeah, there's that great moment where you see him essentially like removing his clothes to put on his suit

and he's shirtless and he is this small boy and yet somehow also jacked. And it's this fascinating contrast between trying to show us a teenage normal boy superhero, but also who has been bitten by a radioactive spider.

And it's somehow different from Tobey Maguire because there's a weird dissonance to seeing a young boy that is so powerful. Yeah, for sure. A little bit. And, you know, he's never really asked, you know, he's never really asked within the film to do anything. I mean, I'm kind of stopping myself because the fairy scene is pretty outlandish, but like, it keeps his action pretty small scale, or it makes it clear that kind of the suit is wearing him right that big stock sequence the stocking sequence where he comes down into the truck and gets trapped and has the long night where he's trapped inside the facility kind of testing his suit out like he's not larger than life you know like that's something that hemsworth does great

in the in the thor movies is this idea of a hero who's larger than life. You know, like that's something that Hemsworth does great in the, in the Thor movies is this idea of a hero who's larger than life. And Evans has some aspect of that as captain America. I, I wouldn't say that Holland's smaller than life, but like just nicely life size, I guess. Yeah. And then he maintains the underdog quality because of that.

And as you say, like in all of the fight sequences, which I think are, are mostly fine. I think they're pretty good. I tend, that tends to be my, my quibbling point with a lot of these films is just the general sameness or a light incoherence with some of the battle scenes.

But, you know, in this movie, it's mostly just a series of showdowns. It's a one-on-one fight. Or, you know, I think one of the best sequences is when he is early in the film busting the bank robbers who are dressed like the Avengers inside of the ATM machine. What's up, guys? Did you get your pin number? Whoa, you're the Avengers. What are you guys doing here? Thor?

Hulk? Good to finally meet you guys. Why don't you be more handsome in person? Iron Man. Hey, what are you doing robbing a bench? You're a billionaire. And, you know, not just his banter, but there's a kind of balletic execution that is essential

to spider-man and in an enclosed space it's really cleverly designed and executed yeah it is and i mean the one thing because again we're kind of leaping around amongst the the the various incarnations of spider-man i mean that's where something like into the spider-verse just has a territorial advantage or a medium-specific advantage. I'm not just saying that any animated Spider-Man movie is better than a live-action one by definition, but there's incredible skill and talent and vision in Into the Spider-Verse. And it's literally the only time in any of the Spider-Man movies that I have just found my breath taken away by conventional Spider-Man-y stuff. It's gorgeous in Into the Spider-Verse. This doesn't approach that. but the two movies have very

different shapes and intentions and and aims yeah i wonder what the the signal points the key inspirations are for a movie like spider-verse because for this movie it's very clear like watts was very straightforward in saying can't buy me love say anything almost famous john hughes these are the flashpoints that you should be thinking about as this movie is happening. Spider-Verse seems like it's operating in a slightly different plane, and it has a lot more to do, frankly, with reading comic books, particularly that Miles Morales run of comic books, than actually watching a movie. Is that fair to say? Yes, and it's a movie that, even though for me, even into the Spider-Verse, again, I'm sounding like such a grouch, but like even Spider-Verse, I think by the end becomes a kind of like, we got to close the portal, like plot-driven movie semiotic playfulness where it's like what can we do with street side graffiti what can we do with locations bleeding into each other what

can we do with with matching shapes and colors within the frame like it's quite dazzling and it's not about trying to like heighten it by using words like art i mean that's a pointless word to use you can call anything art or you can deny that anything's art. But I found that in Spider-Verse, it's not just an artisanal quality, like it's quite visionary at times. I wouldn't say that about anything in Homecoming, but I don't think that on the movie, I mean, I just, I'm like nodding, agreeing with them. It's about execution, you know? The execution's great. In Spider-Verse, it's not just that the execution's great. It's like, boy, some of those visual ideas are just so, they're brilliant, you know? What do you think you do with this Spider-Man in particular?

Set aside Infinity War, set aside Endgame and the way that Spider-Man fits into the broader universe. What do you do making Spider-Man movies going forward? Because as we've been saying, part of the charm of this movie is that it's operating maybe not in miniature, but it's smaller. And we've seen previews for the new Spider-Man movie. I am as sincerely as big a Jake Gyllenhaal fan as anybody and Mysterio is one of my very favorite villains in the history of comic books, in part because he is pure Hollywood. You know, he is a visual effects artist. And so there's something naturally interesting about him and his arc. But it seems like a big story inside of Europe. And I worry about taking Tom Holland too far outside of the realms of his high school hallway. Yeah. I mean, it's not keeping me up nights, but I know what you're saying. I mean, I think.

Just go with me here, Adam. We're making a podcast. I'm with you. I think that what you say about Mysterio is a kind of visual effects artist is true. And I like the casting of Gyllenhaal because I just think of him as his nightcrawler character. I love it. I mean, they're both about people who make the news. That's right. Right. That's right.

Right. That's right. And so if you could ask me for my ultimate, what happens to Spider-Man is I would love a Spider-Man where it was actually just him and Lou Bloom and the Lou Bloom, Peter Parker rivalry of like crime scene photography, like that would, would rule.

And, you know, I think Gilroy needs to direct something else after velvet buzzsaw. So, you know, like do that. Even the nightcrawler name is kind, you know, like do that. Even the Nightcrawler name is kind of a good, like Spider-Man versus the Nightcrawler. But I mean,

in terms of what you do with the character, I think maybe you probably won't end up getting to do too, too much because it just doesn't seem to be a lot of patience. I mean, maybe there'll be patience now that these movies are doing super, super well, but the Spider-Man movies really do set a land speed record for rebooting. There's never been anything like this, except for the Hulk, I guess, right? Yeah, and I don't think people see that as a success. And this one is an out-and-out success, which is very interesting. This one, so we'll see. Will they have the patience to let him age a little bit? And also,

what you were alluding to earlier with just what will the end result of all this intellectual property mongering be? I mean, you know, I'm trying to be a good podcast guest in that talking about the Marvel movies and the MCU and what they mean, I think, is very valid. It's very, I find, elitist and snobby when you see people on Twitter being like, these movies are garbage. Who cares? It's like garbage isn't the word for them. And when this many people are watching them, you kind of have to take it seriously on the other hand there's so much oxygen being sucked up by movies that are so carefully and expertly made to suck up that oxygen you kind of just wonder if anyone's really going to be able to cut through that and make

something that's subversive instead of cute like i was looking back at my homecoming review and i kept using that word cute. And I wasn't like being a dick by doing it. Like it's a cute movie. Cute is obviously not the height that movies can aim for though. Right. I guess black Panthers,

maybe you disagree or you can tell me what you think. Like black Panthers, the closest that one of these individual movies has come to having like true gravitas and like, really what can you do with this character i agree with that um i'm i'm i'm even higher on black panther and cooler than i think you are yes you are yeah um and the truth is the reason these things are important is because of what you're talking about and so it's a paradox they're important because we've been told that they're

important and that their fulfillment you know it's been a self-fulfilling prophecy in many ways they have managed to build this machine effectively over the course of 10 to 12 years time and they've made it elemental to the state of movie going, which is why I've been talking about them for the last month, even though there are certainly films that are going to come out and that have already come out this year that I find more intellectually curious, more brave, more generally interesting. I do think that one, if you sit through the credits of Endgame, there are literally thousands of people working on these films. The amount of people it takes to make something like this happen is something that fascinates me and I'm interested

in. And then ultimately the amount of people that engage with it at such a high level, though it is sucking up the oxygen from other things in the world, it's kind of fascinating to me because there are very few things that we are all watching at the same time at this stage of our lives or listening to or anything. And so I'm consistently compelled as a person who is an editor and is very curious about crowd patterns, why this still draws the maximum attention. And Homecoming is one of those movies that even though it was hugely successful, it does not have that eventized feeling that some of these other films did have. I think even Black Panther, which is a modest story in the scope of Marvel, felt like a cultural event. And part of that is because we were told that by the powers that be.

And part of it is because it really was for people. Spider-Man Homecoming is like the sixth Spider-Man movie. And we were like, this is a pretty fun movie. I like it a lot. And that was our engagement with it, which I found to be such an interesting thing. Yeah, no, I mean, everything you just described about patterns and about why it's important to like keep tabs on these movies and keeping tabs can take a lot of forms. It can be like a form of relativism where it's like, this one's pretty good. I give it a B, this one's a C plus. I mean, that can be boring, but it's valid, but also what

they signify and what they mean. And I think you're right that Black Panther is the one that felt the most eventized, and it is partially because people said it should be, but it's also some of the things that it's aiming for and reaching for and trying to use a really populist language to address. And I guess that's one of the reasons why, not to circle endlessly around the aspects of Homecoming, but when we were talking about the villain you know one of the things about black panther is that the villain had a charisma and a point that the movie couldn't quite seem to accommodate and i gave the film and especially michael b jordan who's a brilliant actor i gave him i gave the movie so much credit for churning

that up and then was a little frustrated that they couldn't give it its due i think that spider-man homecoming is much less ambitious than Black Panther and the Tombs character isn't ultimately as compelling as Michael B. Jordan, but his treatment by the movie is actually superior in terms of how the movie works. I think in making it seem like he kind of has a point and then letting him be a comic book villain and letting his defeat be kind of ambiguous and kind of ambivalent and suggesting there may be some good in him. So it's one of these cases where smaller is in some ways kind of better. Like it's lesser, but it's also more successful. Did that make sense?

It does make sense. I would probably disagree with it though. I thought that there was something a little bit more, I think it actually is brave to put the concept of disenfranchisement inside of your own country and inside of the world that you live in inside of a Marvel movie. That as an idea, the notion of somebody like Killmonger and what America did to him and the cultural violence did to him, I thought that that was so much more provocative than sort of vaguely alluded to a concept of economic anxiety. And is that know, you know, is that not what you were saying? Am I mischaracterizing? Oh, no, no, no. We're saying the same thing. My frustration was only that in the case of Black Panther, he did that so well that then the way the character

was ultimately treated by the film, like keeping him around, not even to the end of one movie and not really giving him a lot of mic time. That's true. That's true. That's, I mean, and maybe that's a good way to kind of segue out and talk about the way that they closed homecoming, which, you know, we always talk about these in credit sequences and this one I found to be a little bit obtuse in part because it felt like the, the,

the classic version where you immediately have to Google as soon as something happens, because, you know, they show us this encounter between Adrian tombs and Matt Gargan, who I mentioned earlier, who was one of the people he was doing business with trading weapons with on the ferry in the film. And they both find themselves behind bars and they have this encounter. And Matt Gargan asks Adrian Toombs that he, if he knows the identity, he believes he knows the identity of Peter Parker. And that,

I guess, is setting up some sort of vulture scorpion movie down the road. But that's very, for a film that feels like it's not working too hard to over-explain its mythology, that felt like the one time where there was a little bit too much cynicism in leading its audience down the breadcrumb trail of Marvel Wikia. I'm sure someone, it won't be me because I haven't seen all the movies, but someone will probably rank when this is all over, like, you know, what are the best end credit cut scenes or the funniest kind of like end movie Easter eggs across all the Marvel movies? Because there's like 22 movies and they each have at least one, right? Yes.

Homecoming actually has my favorite one of any of the movies, which is the very last one with Chris Evans just basically being like, Hey, you waited around for nothing. Yes. Which, which, which I actually thought was, was, was,

was really funny. Yeah. I mean, I'm not a, and I don't say it disparagingly, but like, I'm not a comic book person. I read them and I'm familiar with, with some of them,

but I don't have that knowledge. So I have to Wikipedia stuff too. And yeah, I mean the, the, the little end credit thing in this wasn't great i just thought that even what i did like about it though is it just gave us another keaton moment and another interestingly ambiguous performance moment from him like the gears are very mechanical but just

like the pleasure of getting to see keaton again and just the patience and wisdom of not killing an interesting villain off which in black panther they did. And I know it's a comic book movie and they can bring Michael B. Jordan back if they want. Maybe he has a twin brother named Drillmonger or something like they can do this if they want to. But it killed me at the end of Black Panther. It's like, this character's awesome. This actor's so good. Keep him around. Well, Adam, we're going to keep you around. I appreciate you talking to me, not just with your usual intellectual verve but also a willingness to dive deep

into some of the more frivolous aspects of these Marvel movies I had the time of my life Sean well wait until you see Endgame two weeks from now on a Wednesday in a theater all by yourself then you'll truly be having the time of your life it's going to rule I can't wait

I'm going to watch that movie so alone after it's been spoiled for me on social media like 500 times I'll probably be on my phone during it. It's going to be, it's going to be great. Adam, thank you very much. Now you can go be alone again. Thanks for having me, Sean. Bye. Thank you again, of course, to Adam Neiman. This concludes our Marvel Month series where we look back at the films in the MCU until later this week. We actually have one last thing to say

and that, of course, is about Avengers Endgame. My colleague and I, Mallory Rubin, saw the film this morning. We'll be sharing a new podcast with you first thing Friday morning where we're breaking down the entire movie. We'll be talking about life, death, and the world in the aftermath of Thanos' Infinity Gauntlet. We'll see you then and forever.

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