Matt Walsh Reviews A Beloved Superhero Movie
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
192.84909
Summary
SPOILER WARNING: This episode discusses the latest Spider-Man film, "Man: Into the Spider-Verse." It's the latest installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and it's getting even more ridiculous than the previous films.
Transcript
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He must have given up, thrown in the towel, abandoned his sad little masquerade.
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I finally got to him. The power of the press triumphs.
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Very rarely do I actually see these big blockbuster movies when they're in theaters.
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And I did see this one. And I hate to be so predictable, but I have to tell you that I didn't like the movie.
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And it seems like everyone loves it. It's got like 105% of Rotten Tomatoes. Everyone loves the movie.
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For me, the Spider-Man movie exemplifies everything that's wrong with superhero movies.
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And first of all, just to run through some of the problems. There are no stakes.
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I don't mean S-T-E-A-K-S. There's nothing at stake.
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There's not a whiff of suspense or narrative tension with these movies.
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Because every problem is solved with either miraculous technology or superpowers.
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Or superpowers. And okay, that part I get. It's a superhero movie.
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It's been a while since I've seen one of these.
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And now, apparently now in the Marvel superhero universe, they have actual wizards
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who can just fly in and snap their fingers and make everything okay.
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So there's no limits. There's no rules within the universe itself.
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And then so it's like watching someone play a video game with all the cheat codes.
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There's no suspense to it. There's no point in watching it.
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I'm fine, obviously, with the idea of a superhero movie or a science fiction movie
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where things can happen in that world that can't happen in reality.
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But what you have to do, and this is just good writing, you set the rules for this universe
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in the beginning. And the rules can be completely different from the rules in our universe.
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That's fine. But then you have to obey those rules within the story.
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Instead, in this movie, you could have a supervillain from a previous film.
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And he took up multiple films. He was a big bad guy in previous films.
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And in this one, he was turned good with a contraption that a kid whips together
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I never explained how he did it, but okay, well, you could do that now.
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And if that doesn't work, a wizard can fly in and brainwash the world.
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And there are multiverses and time warps, and you can go back in time and forward in time.
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All of that can be utilized if the narrative requires.
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If the writers write their backs against the wall,
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well, you know, just go to a different universe, bring a wizard in, whatever you have to do.
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And then you have, like, a superhero can stop a train or something with one hand in one scene.
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But then in the next, he can be knocked unconscious with a simple punch to the head.
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See, the rules are rewritten depending on what the writers need for each scene,
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It's fun for the kids, but it's bad filmmaking.
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President Trump recently issued a warning from his Mar-a-Lago home, quote,
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Our currency is crashing and will soon no longer be the world standard,
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which will be our greatest defeat, frankly, in 200 years.
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There are three reasons the central banks are dumping the U.S. dollar,
00:03:09.640
inflation, deficit spending, and our insurmountable national debt.
00:03:12.940
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00:03:17.900
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You know, over the last couple of days, I've spoken about my experience watching the latest Spider-Man film.
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And during the comment section of the show, I have briefly made my case against it.
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This conversation has provoked anger from the audience,
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and even dissension within the ranks at the Daily Wire.
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Second best Spider-Man film of all time after Into the Spider-Verse.
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And I'm told by a source that when I was making fun of Spider-Man yesterday on the show,
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the people in the control room were shaking their heads scornfully because they didn't approve of what I was saying.
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One thing you know about me is that when people get upset about something that I say,
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that just encourages me to say it again, louder and longer.
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I have, as you know, the maturity of a four-year-old, which means that I should actually be the target audience for Marvel movies,
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but they still don't resonate with me because although I have the maturity of a toddler,
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I still have the brain of an adult, which unfortunately precludes me from enjoying anything that Marvel has to offer.
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And so today we're moving beyond just the latest Spider-Man movie,
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and instead we're going to expand the scope of our inquiry and finally, once and for all, cancel Marvel itself.
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Indeed, all superhero movies of all types are canceled.
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The first problem with superhero movies is that they're all exactly the same,
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Now, superhero movies in the 90s were merely light on plot.
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Superhero movies these days are entirely plotless.
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And that's because of the advent of franchise filmmaking and world building,
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and that's turned every movie into a setup for the next movie.
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There can be no substantial progress, no final resolution,
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because it's always just setting it up for the next one.
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Each installment, none of these installments exist on their own.
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They just exist because they've got to set up the next one,
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I have nothing against a fanciful tale about a man in a rubber suit fighting bad guys.
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Bad guys who, through approximately 20 million story arcs,
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still have not thought to simply walk up to their nemesis and shoot him directly in the face.
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Now, I'm no expert on the mythology of Marvel or DC,
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but I'm pretty sure a bullet to the face would dispatch almost all of the heroes in all of the universes.
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I know, except for Superman and a few others, but the rest, I mean, Spider-Man?
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But these are issues with story, and superhero movies don't exist to tell stories.
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Now, when I talk about this, I'm often accused of taking the stories too seriously.
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I take them as seriously as I take like a Geico commercial.
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If you have a secret identity, you need to keep it secret.
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And the problem is that the writers don't take the story seriously either,
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which is why they're at the point now of throwing everything into the mix just to keep the franchise going.
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Whatever is needed in each successive moment to propel it to the next moment.
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And then at the end, you can erase everybody's memory and do it all over again in the next movie.
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All of these Marvel script writers, they should be writing listicles for BuzzFeed.
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It's Marvel saying, well, here's two and a half hours.
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And I urge you to free yourself of their clutches.
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I urge you to join me in saying to comic book movies,