(Spoilers if you have not seen the movie yet, I guess).
I recently posted this on Twitter:
I don’t know when it happened, but I started hating superhero movies at a certain point. I would be sitting there in the theatre and just find the whole experience way too loud, and boring AF. As I get older I’m in the theatre and I find myself thinking about my actual real life problems more, “What the fuck are you going to do for money next? Your grandfather is in the hospital with fucking lung cancer: what’s gonna happen to grandma when he passes away? Will you ever find a wife? Will we really all die in 2050 like the news says?” It has become increasingly harder for me to distance myself from my everyday problems and focus on a guy wearing tights for 2 hours, so I have pretty much stopped going to superhero movies. They’ve become one of those things in the culture now where people say things like, “Hey, what’d you think of the new Avengers?” They don’t even ask if you’ve seen it; I just have to stand there and lie so I don’t sound like a bitter asshole. I don’t have time to explain to people, “My brain doesn’t work for those movies anymore and I can’t do it.”
Anyway, today I felt depressed. Real talk, 2019 is going pretty awful for me, NGL. I really be goin’ thru it fr fr :(. But I was invited to go see the movie, so I went. Like I said: I was originally not going to see it, but I was invited out, and I saw HOMECOMING in theatres 2 years ago and figured…fuck it. Why not?
Here are a couple notes about the movie in no particular order:
-The beginning: Tony Stark is dead? The Avengers are done? What the fuck is going on here? I had no clue what the fuck was happening. This one is my fault, as I have not been following superhero movies, but I thought this was horrendously done. I totally get that I’m supposed to be going into these movies with knowledge about what’s going on in the universe or whatever, but this felt hella weird and very clumsily done.
-One of the first posts on this website was this one. The weird thing about that post is the fact that I bring up Jake Gyllenhaal and his character Nightcrawler in order to make a point about Michael Keaton’s character….and sure enough Gyllenhaal appears in the second one! Weird AF. If I somehow have the power to predict what will happen in future Spider-Man movies I would just like to say right now: Marisa Tomei is the only person in the third one and she’s still stunning and somehow doesn’t age at all.
-On Gyllenhaal’s character: this is the thing that “pissed me off” and why I gave the article that clickbait ass title. I hate how Gyllenhaal’s character was framed as this dude who was fired. The average American that gets fired isn’t some evil genius, it’s usually an undeserving average joe. At this stage, getting fired is a big fear people have due to the economy, etc. I mean, it’s practically a North American hallmark now: good people get fired. Rich cocksucking people prosper. I was even fired myself earlier this year by a racist piece of shit cocksucker for unjust cause: it happens! Trump is president, and “you’re fired” is in the fucking lexicon and the culture now.
To make Gyllenhaal’s character a guy who gets fired by the wealthy Tony Stark, and then goes on to become a villain, is absolute horseshit to me. He’s painted as this guy who was fired because he was “unstable,” making it his fault. While Tony Stark was this brilliant innovator, taking all the credit for this apparently unstable guy’s work. The rich dude wins again.
This goes back to the issues I had in the first film with Keaton’s character: I have way more sympathy for a layman like Gyllenhaal’s character than I do for someone like Tony Stark. I felt they did a poor job at making me hate Gyllenhaal: he wasn’t entirely in the wrong about feeling upset about his situation. He was a smart dude, his ideas were stolen, and no one gave a shit.
-Marisa Tomei: I like the fact that they’re going for a “hip” Spider-Man world still and they’ve given Peter a hot aunt. She’s a good looking woman; when I was a kid Aunt May looked more like a grandmother.
-Hijabi background character: I like the fact that Peter Parker apparently now has Muslim classmates now. Pretty cool! Peter Parker’s been living in New York all his fucking life, and only now is Marvel starting to put some Muslims in the mix. Nice to see some progress in that regard. It would be nice to see that same girl in a more central role, but we can’t get too crazy here; that might piss off middle America and lose some ticket sales I guess…(Marvel: if you ever need a brown guy in your future movies please feel free to HMU. I’m fucking broke and I have a dope reel).
-The Led Zeppelin joke: I really enjoyed the moment an AC/DC song is playing and Tom Holland’s character thinks it’s Led Zeppelin. The mostly younger crowd I saw the movie with didn’t seem to get the joke or laugh at all. It was a great comment on the youth of this version of Spider-Man, and where I’m at in life: these movies are no longer for me.
-Sam Jackson: I really had no clue he was gonna be in this, and I liked that he was. If any rich movie exec cocksuckers are reading this: MORE SAM JACKSON.
-Audience retention was low: something I pay attention to whenever I see a movie in theatres is how often people take their phones out. In 2019, movie audiences are 99% awful. 2 years ago, I commented on the fact that nobody took their phone out for HOMECOMING. During this movie, I counted at least 4 people used their phones at various points. That’s either a comment on the film itself, where we’re at culturally, or both.
