The Matt Walsh Show - Should You See the ＂New＂ Spider-Man Movie？

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00:00:57.240 As you may have heard, a new Spider-Man film was released last week.

00:01:01.840 The movie has crushed box office records, already raking in something like,

00:01:05.580 though I haven't Googled this, $40 trillion in its first week, I think it was.

00:01:09.920 Spider-Man has earned more money in a week than the GDP of every sub-Saharan African country combined, or close enough.

00:01:16.800 It would appear, sadly, that the reports of the death of the superhero genre were premature,

00:01:21.700 a case of wishful thinking.

00:01:24.040 At least they were wishful thinking if you heard those reports on normally reliable podcasts, such as, I don't know, The Matt Walsh Show.

00:01:30.260 Now, this latest film is the fourth in the Tom Holland series of Spider-Man films.

00:01:36.180 The first three in that series, and I did Google this, were called Spider-Man Homecoming, Spider-Man Far From Home, and Spider-Man No Way Home.

00:01:43.980 This latest iteration is Spider-Man Brand New Day.

00:01:47.640 Now, if you're wondering what makes this movie brand new, the answer is not much, except that it's the first Tom Holland Spider-Man film.

00:01:54.040 to not have the word home in it.

00:01:56.300 That marks the first, and as it turns out,

00:01:58.500 only creative risk this movie will make.

00:02:01.240 It's important that you don't confuse

00:02:03.140 these four Spider-Man films

00:02:04.600 with the Andrew Garfield Spider-Man series

00:02:06.800 or the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man series before that.

00:02:10.120 Peter one, Peter two, Peter three.

00:02:12.700 Every about nine and a half years

00:02:15.060 in accordance with the prophecies,

00:02:16.280 Hollywood executives go out and recruit the blandest actor

00:02:19.720 between the ages of 21 and 32 to become the next Spider-Man.

00:02:23.280 And rather than building on the work of the previous Spider-Men, they tear the whole spider edifice down and start from scratch, telling the entire story over again from the beginning.

00:02:33.860 The upshot is that the origin story of Spider-Man has been told and told again and then told again.

00:02:40.560 Jesus Christ only got two accounts of his origin story, the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke.

00:02:46.320 Spider-Man has had at least three this century alone.

00:02:49.820 That seems disproportionate if you ask me, which you didn't.

00:02:53.280 Now, you might be wondering why I'm talking about any of this.

00:02:56.320 My antipathy for superhero movies is well-established.

00:03:01.180 And yet, today, speaking of things nobody asked for or wants,

00:03:05.980 I'm going to offer my review of the latest Spider-Man film.

00:03:10.280 And I'm going to review this film because I saw this film,

00:03:13.700 and my suffering must mean something.

00:03:16.300 As the old influencer mantra goes,

00:03:18.560 if you can't at least get some content out of it,

00:03:21.140 then what the hell's the point?

00:03:23.280 Yes, I went and saw the new Spider-Man movie on opening night.

00:03:30.200 I waded through the throngs of Spider-Man superfans, many of them wearing Spider-Man

00:03:37.100 apparel or even full Spider-Man suits.

00:03:40.060 These were grown adults, by the way.

00:03:41.880 I had not felt so out of place somewhere since I went to the Women's March in 2022, but the

00:03:46.280 latter was a scene for my documentary, What is a Woman?, which is a better movie, by the

00:03:49.920 way.

00:03:50.120 It was a sacrifice I had to make for the art.

00:03:52.380 the trip to the movie theater last Friday was a sacrifice I made for love. Not love of Spider-Man,

00:03:59.520 but love of my wife, who for some reason really wanted to see the new Spider-Man movie. Now,

00:04:05.580 we've been married for 15 years. I had no idea that she's been a Spider-Man fan this entire time.

00:04:12.120 She has kept that part of her life hidden, locked away in the deep recesses of her heart,

00:04:18.020 and I wish it had stayed there.

00:04:19.920 But last week, her Spider-Man fandom

00:04:21.960 came floating suddenly to the surface

00:04:25.220 like some kind of dying creature

00:04:27.700 from the depths of the sea.

00:04:29.740 She requested, out of nowhere,

00:04:31.420 that we spend our one precious date night of the week

00:04:34.160 watching this movie.

00:04:36.980 And when she first brought that up, I said,

00:04:39.840 Spider-Man?

00:04:41.600 Spider-Man is what you want to go watch.

00:04:43.620 I objected, as you might imagine.

00:04:45.300 I suggested that we do something else with our time, go to dinner, throw ourselves into a volcano.

00:04:52.200 Really, anything would be preferable.

00:04:54.080 But then she pointed out that I always pick the movies and she always watches what I want to watch.

00:04:59.800 And I didn't admit this to her.

00:05:02.240 And please don't tell her I said this, but she's right.

00:05:04.840 I have probably picked 98% of the movies and shows that we've watched together through our entire marriage.

00:05:10.440 I am the resident chooser of movies, the key master of movies in our household.

00:05:16.800 I've always considered that to be a solemn responsibility, something I take very seriously.

00:05:21.840 It is a burden that I carry for the good of our family.

00:05:24.600 And most importantly, I never steer us wrong.

00:05:27.600 The entertainment offerings I choose never disappoint.

00:05:31.360 Now, my wife might disagree with that statement.

00:05:34.980 Actually, I might disagree with it too on second thought.

00:05:37.660 There have been some unfortunate ones in there.

00:05:39.680 last year, we watched the Netflix movie Carry On, at my suggestion. That's an action film about a

00:05:44.840 TSA agent who gets blackmailed by Jason Bateman into smuggling a bomb onto a plane. It wasn't

00:05:50.900 very good. In fact, it was probably one of the worst movies ever made. But how could I have

00:05:56.000 possibly guessed that based on the description? Which sounds great. Well, even though there are

00:06:00.500 certain schools giving out worthless degrees in content creation or lesbian dance theory,

00:06:04.300 that doesn't mean that there aren't degrees worth pursuing or subjects worth studying.

00:06:07.580 Subjects like classical literature, where great works that stand the test of time are studied.

00:06:13.720 Stories like the Iliad or the Odyssey, not because they're old, but because they still have something true to say.

00:06:18.560 It's one reason I appreciate what Hillsdale College is doing.

00:06:21.360 They're offering a free online course on the Odyssey taught by Professor Benedict Whalen.

00:06:25.980 He walks through Homer's masterpiece, explains why it's remained one of the foundational works of Western civilization.

00:06:31.320 It's about a man trying to get home.

00:06:32.400 It's about duty, family, loyalty, the temptation to choose an easier life over a meaningful one.

00:06:38.200 3,000 years later, the importance of those values has not gone away.

00:06:41.300 If anything, they've become even more relevant.

00:06:43.460 If you've always wanted to read great literature or better yet, understand it, well, this is a great place to start.

00:06:49.120 Go to hillsdale.edu slash Walsh to enroll.

00:06:51.780 It's totally free.

00:06:52.840 Start reading, learn the classics, rediscover the West.

00:06:55.960 Start right now at hillsdale.edu slash Walsh.

00:06:59.600 Anyway, on our way into the theater, I warned my wife that we would be the only adults without children in the room.

00:07:06.140 This is Spider-Man, after all. It's going to be a bunch of 13-year-old boys and us.

00:07:10.340 My wife bet the opposite. She said the opposite would be the case.

00:07:13.800 She said it'd be nothing but adults. And she was right about that, too, it turns out.

00:07:18.520 We walked into our screening room to find an auditorium packed with childless 30 and 40-somethings. 0.99

00:07:25.660 I felt relieved

00:07:27.420 And then I felt sad

00:07:29.100 And then I felt nauseated

00:07:30.940 And then I felt sad again

00:07:32.960 But then I felt relieved again

00:07:34.100 Because there's nothing quite like the comfort of discovering 0.99

00:07:36.200 That other people are as big of losers as you are 0.96

00:07:38.860 Now as for the film itself 0.99

00:07:41.100 I am heartbroken

00:07:42.160 Though very far from surprise to report

00:07:44.500 That it was extremely terrible

00:07:46.800 This is a very bad movie

00:07:49.500 Even worse than I expected

00:07:50.980 And I expected it to have all the artistic depth

00:07:53.720 And merit of a cell phone commercial

00:07:56.200 Actually, this movie is a cell phone commercial.

00:07:58.580 I have never in my life seen so much product placement.

00:08:03.280 It is shocking.

00:08:04.420 This was the QVC of movies.

00:08:06.240 They might as well put a 1-800 number up on the screen.

00:08:09.280 Spider-Man has a Samsung Galaxy phone, which is heavily featured in this movie.

00:08:17.420 Spider-Man's Samsung Galaxy phone gets more close-up shots than Spider-Man himself.

00:08:24.080 Like, it should be listed as a cast member on the IMDb page.

00:08:28.520 You might be asking, how could you possibly get Spider-Man's cell phone into the movie?

00:08:36.020 Well, they get it in there a lot.

00:08:38.100 They engineer a thin excuse for all of these gratuitous full frontal cell phone shots.

00:08:42.540 In the film, Spider-Man is apparently subscribed to some kind of app that alerts him whenever a crime is happening in New York City.

00:08:53.340 Okay. The app pings Spider-Man, which like, this is way less cool than the bat signal. Okay. First

00:08:59.520 of all, you got the bat signal. That's cool. Not very practical, but at least that's cool. 0.92

00:09:04.900 Right. The big light in the sky.

00:09:09.960 Nice.

00:09:10.860 Now we're doing an app and anytime there's a crime, Spider-Man gets a little,

00:09:15.140 it goes ping and he just looks at it and it literally says crime is happening.

00:09:20.840 That's what it said.

00:09:21.760 No other information.

00:09:22.740 It doesn't even tell you where it's happening.

00:09:24.260 Just crime detected.

00:09:26.580 So the app pings Spider-Man four or five times throughout the story,

00:09:30.020 which is an absurdly excessive number of cuts to a cell phone,

00:09:33.580 but it's also an absurdly low number of crimes to have happen in New York City.

00:09:38.240 Because the other problem here is that if such an app existed in real life,

00:09:41.120 it would be going off literally 300 times a day,

00:09:45.080 which is the actual average for felony crimes in the city.

00:09:48.500 But this Spider-Man movie is not just a long commercial for Samsung.

00:09:53.000 Emphasis on long, by the way.

00:09:54.560 This thing is like two and a half hours long.

00:09:57.080 There is no reason on God's green earth for a flick about a guy with spider powers

00:10:02.480 running around in red spandex to be more than 90 minutes at the most.

00:10:08.440 I mean, really 85 minutes and we should be out.

00:10:11.280 But for some reason, it was decided 10 years ago that every theatrically released movie,

00:10:15.360 especially if it features a guy in spandex running around,

00:10:17.740 has to be as long as Schindler's List.

00:10:20.720 So the days of short and efficient blockbusters

00:10:23.360 are over for some reason.

00:10:25.760 But anyway, they take advantage of this gargantuan runtime

00:10:28.340 by squeezing in commercials for,

00:10:30.160 I'm not making this up either,

00:10:31.740 Little Caesars Pizza and BMW and PlayStation

00:10:35.260 and Liquid IV and countless other products.

00:10:38.000 Apparently this movie set a record

00:10:39.260 with a $309 million partner campaign,

00:10:42.920 which is to say that Sony whored this movie out

00:10:45.720 to literally any company

00:10:47.240 that would throw some money at it.

00:10:49.600 Now, you'd think a multi-billion dollar film franchise

00:10:52.360 would have higher standards,

00:10:54.220 but I guess money can't buy self-esteem, 0.84

00:10:56.940 as every OnlyFans star inevitably learns.

00:11:00.160 At one point, we randomly cut to a Little Caesars delivery guy

00:11:03.560 dropping off a Little Caesars pizza.

00:11:06.680 That's a scene in the movie.

00:11:08.580 And then we see Peter Parker going to retrieve

00:11:10.820 the Little Caesars pizza from his front door.

00:11:13.540 None of this serves the plot in any way at all.

00:11:16.480 never mind the fact that Peter Parker lives in New York City. He can web his way to any

00:11:22.060 New York pizzeria in minutes and he's ordering Little Caesars. It's like having a scene in

00:11:29.040 The Godfather where Vito Corleone orders Olive Garden to go with a close-up shot of the Olive

00:11:34.720 Garden logo on the bag. And then he hops online to leave a five-star Yelp review with a close-up

00:11:40.800 of the Yelp logo. But see, that would never happen in The Godfather because for one thing,

00:11:45.120 Yelp and Olive Garden didn't exist when that film was made, but for another, The Godfather is a film.

00:11:49.980 It is a real film. It is a piece of art. A Marvel film is not a film so much as a series of

00:11:55.180 advertisements vaguely stitched together to resemble the general shape of something that

00:11:59.280 may be mistaken for a film. Now, this could perhaps be forgiven if the story surrounding

00:12:04.140 the commercials was compelling, or at least diverting and entertaining enough that I wouldn't

00:12:09.900 spend the majority of the runtime praying for a fatal heart attack. Suffice it to say,

00:12:14.120 on my way in the door, I had set the bar very low. Okay, I had set the bar for this movie at about

00:12:21.040 the level of the Titanic, and I don't mean the movie the Titanic, I mean the actual Titanic,

00:12:25.800 12,000 feet below sea level. Spider-Man Brand New Day wouldn't have to swing on a web or jump or

00:12:31.600 even pick up its legs to make it over the bar that I had set. Yet somehow it managed to navigate

00:12:37.740 itself below the bar in some kind of grotesque act of circus sideshow contortionism. Now allow

00:12:44.940 me to attempt to describe the plot, which is a very generous term, as best I can. There will

00:12:51.480 be spoilers going forward, but then again, if you've ever seen a single superhero movie in your

00:12:55.980 life, you already know everything that will happen. This movie does attempt to surprise you

00:13:01.020 at a few different points, but it's kind of like my three-year-old playing hide-and-seek by huddling

00:13:06.400 behind the curtain with his legs and arms and half his head still visible. So it starts with

00:13:10.080 Spider-Man swinging around New York fighting bad guys. And this is all handled by the way of

00:13:15.400 montage. We see him fighting evil ninjas for five seconds, and then he fights the villain Scorpion,

00:13:21.180 so-called because he wears a mechanical suit that resembles a scorpion, which by the way,

00:13:25.320 is a really impractical setup for committing crimes. What crime, what, what crime would,

00:13:32.260 in what scenario would you be assisted in committing a crime by putting on a giant suit

00:13:38.600 that looks like a scorpion? Someone answer me that. And then we see him locked in combat with

00:13:43.480 a sharp tooth bad guy. A sharp tooth guy tries to throw Spider-Man off a roof because obviously

00:13:49.300 that's going to be an effective way to kill a mutant who shoots webs out of his hands and sticks

00:13:53.720 to walls. What are you going to do next? Drown Aquaman? Now, plausibility issues aside, all of

00:13:59.120 the crime fighting we montage our way through is more entertaining and would have made for a much

00:14:03.740 better movie than the story they eventually settle on. Another fact established early on is that Peter

00:14:08.960 Parker's chubby Asian friend, I didn't catch his name, and his ex-girlfriend MJ have both suffered

00:14:13.740 some kind of amnesia and no longer remember Peter Parker. Apparently the entire world forgot about

00:14:19.140 Peter Parker and this is due to some kind of magical spell or whatever from the previous movie

00:14:23.300 which I believe I watched with my kids but I don't remember anything about it. Maybe that's meant to

00:14:27.820 be like a kind of a fascinating meta commentary. Like the movie where everybody forgot about Peter

00:14:32.800 Parker is also itself extremely forgettable. That's kind of an art. Was that an artistic

00:14:37.320 choice? Maybe. But the precise in-universe reason for this amnesia isn't really important. The real

00:14:43.020 reason for the amnesia is that it allows the filmmakers to repeat the same beats from the

00:14:47.900 first film in the series. That's the only reason they did this. So Peter Parker gets to meet the

00:14:52.780 chubby Asian guy again, which he's already done. He gets to try to win MJ's heart again, which he's 1.00

00:14:57.240 already done. They had to repeat all of these beats because the one thing that can never happen

00:15:01.680 in a Marvel movie under any circumstance is character development. Character development

00:15:08.040 requires change and change suggests entropy. It suggests a finite temporal system where eventually

00:15:14.360 things will reach a conclusion. Things will end, but there can be no conclusion. There can be no

00:15:19.580 end, no point ever in a Marvel movie. They need to keep all the characters alive and the same so

00:15:25.320 they can keep the franchise going. They can keep the Little Caesars commercials going. They can

00:15:29.280 sell more toys and more Samsung Galaxy phones. So if any character appears to be on the precipice

00:15:34.400 of developing or changing, well, they can just snap their fingers and abracadabra, amnesia.

00:15:39.920 Or failing that, they can always bring in another version of that character from the infinite

00:15:44.260 multiverse. Which means that even if a character dies, it's still not over. Nothing has changed.

00:15:51.120 Nothing mattered. There are a trillion other versions of that character in a trillion other universes. And you might think, well, you know, that means that there are no stakes in any of these movies.

00:16:03.740 You might think that developing stakes for your characters is like the most basic entry-level requirement for storytelling.

00:16:10.880 You might think that it barely counts as a story if there are no stakes.

00:16:15.180 And if you think all of those things, you obviously have more artistic insight and higher standards than any executive at Marvel Studios.

00:16:22.120 After the montage, we get into what is going to have to suffice as our central conflict, sadly.

00:16:28.020 And the conflict is this.

00:16:29.340 An evil psychic is on the loose

00:16:31.820 Who can jump into your mind and control your body

00:16:34.620 Now, I know what you're thinking

00:16:36.560 Boring

00:16:37.820 I'd rather go back to sharp tooth guy

00:16:40.280 I'd rather go back to the scorpion guy

00:16:42.280 They were way cooler

00:16:44.140 I agree

00:16:45.600 But in fairness, there are some conceivable ways

00:16:48.420 To tell a fun story

00:16:49.720 Where a superhero fights an evil psychic 0.96

00:16:51.940 Sadly, the filmmakers didn't conceive

00:16:54.860 Of any of those conceivable ways

00:16:56.700 Now, the logistics of the mind leaping

00:16:58.820 are important to understand. So the psychic can jump into another person's mind from your mind,

00:17:04.340 like a kind of psychic leapfrog, but has to work within certain rather convenient,

00:17:10.000 for the screenwriter, not for the psychic, physical limitations. So the psychic can only jump

00:17:14.820 from one mind to another at distances of 33 feet or less, or approximately two car lengths.

00:17:21.680 So if you keep a social distance of 34 feet, then you're safe. Now you might hear that and think,

00:17:27.220 well, how would they figure that out? Like, that must be kind of interesting that they had to

00:17:31.200 figure out that rule. Well, it's not interesting because Spider-Man discovers the 33 feet limitation,

00:17:37.860 a pivotal piece of information, by asking his computer. Yes, Spider-Man, along with having

00:17:43.400 superpowers, also has a magical computer that can figure anything out and solve any problem in

00:17:49.720 seconds. Now, you might think that a movie about superpowered beings wouldn't also need the deus

00:17:55.360 sex machina, of super-powered computers. But if you think that, then you're simply expecting too

00:18:00.900 much of Marvel screenwriters. I mean, as we've seen for many years now, Marvel screenwriters

00:18:06.720 have the easiest job in human history. They can come up with any problem for their character to

00:18:13.500 face, and then having spent like four minutes trying to imagine a creative and logical way for

00:18:18.100 the character to solve it, they can just wave their hand and say, you know, and then the computer

00:18:22.720 figures it out. Spider-Man gets in a bind and what's he going to do this time? You know,

00:18:28.160 the computer, whatever. The computer does a thing. Or they can have the superhero suddenly develop

00:18:32.480 the specific superpowers that he needs to escape that particular jam, which is a device also used

00:18:38.780 in this movie. The one thing a Marvel screenwriter will never do and has never done in this universe

00:18:44.580 or any of the trillion others is devise a clever and unexpected escape route for the character

00:18:51.020 that obeys the logic of the world they've created

00:18:54.280 while not relying on the cinematic equivalent

00:18:57.160 of the red easy button

00:18:58.640 from those Staples commercials 20 years ago.

00:19:00.900 Today we'll be performing a triple hopper

00:19:02.640 with a procedure.

00:19:03.500 But you've never done that before.

00:19:04.880 That's okay.

00:19:08.840 Staples, that was easy.

00:19:10.540 The computers serve another purpose too,

00:19:12.260 and you've already guessed it.

00:19:14.420 Marvel had a brand partnership

00:19:16.160 with the company that made these,

00:19:18.480 I think it's Asus computers or something,

00:19:20.340 asus i don't know and the characters use those computers a lot so if you're hoping to see an

00:19:24.960 action movie where the action heroes spend like a quarter of the runtime fiddling around on their

00:19:29.160 computers you're in luck i was just disappointed that we didn't get to see other household devices

00:19:33.840 featured prominently what about like a 12 minute sequence where spider-man loads his kitchen aid

00:19:38.040 dishwasher maybe they're saving that for the next film one can only hope we should note here by the

00:19:43.100 way that peter parker has no job and no source of income yet can afford all of the products that

00:19:47.880 they're constantly showing off. He can also afford the lease on his apartment, despite, again,

00:19:51.940 having no income. And these might seem like nitpicks, but when you're spending $225 million

00:19:59.440 to make a movie, and when that movie is hailed by critics and audiences alike, as this one has been,

00:20:07.080 I don't think it's too much to ask that someone during the course of production

00:20:11.480 make some kind of effort to fill at least the most glaring plot holes.

00:20:17.420 Now, it turns out that the psychic is a girl named Jean Grey,

00:20:21.040 who is, or I guess will be in the next Marvel movie, a founding member of the X-Men.

00:20:25.400 Jean Grey is trying to break into a secretive government agency

00:20:28.460 called the Department of Damage Control.

00:20:32.360 And it's saved for a late reveal that this secretive government agency is,

00:20:36.320 you'll never guess it, actually sinister.

00:20:38.580 And this will come as a surprise to you if you've never seen any movie ever.

00:20:43.560 But if you are familiar with movies, especially Marvel movies, then you know that secret government agencies are literally always sinister, which is the only point where Marvel movies resemble real life, actually.

00:20:54.700 That part is realistic.

00:20:55.600 Now, Gray's go-to strategy for breaking into the agency is to mind leap into a random old lady, have the random old lady steal a tank, drive the tank slowly and laboriously across town, slam it into another secret government building, kidnap the villain Scorpion, who's being held there in custody, mind leap into him, and then have him, I guess, break into the other secret government agency's building across town.

00:21:26.420 Again, I'm not making any of this up.

00:21:27.700 That's really the plan.

00:21:30.060 I mean, you might wonder, like, why didn't she just mind leap into someone who works in the building she's trying to access?

00:21:37.460 Or at the very least, if you're going to slam a tank into a building, why not slam it into the building you're trying to get to?

00:21:42.700 Why slam a tank into a different building, kidnap someone, and have them go into the building you want to go to?

00:21:50.360 But apparently this woman with godlike mental powers never thought of that. 1.00

00:21:53.500 after that plan fails, her plan B is to mind leap into the Hulk and have the Hulk smash into the 1.00

00:21:59.980 building. That plan also makes no sense, but it provides an excuse for the Hulk to show up. So,

00:22:05.040 you know, they can put him in the trailer, which is the only reason he's there. Eventually we find

00:22:08.340 out that the evil psychic isn't actually evil at all. She's just trying to rescue her psychic

00:22:12.780 sister who was kidnapped by, you know, the bad government guys. The problem is that,

00:22:18.140 remember that tank i mentioned after having the the old woman hijack the tank she blows up the 1.00

00:22:26.580 tank no doubt killing dozens of people for no reason it didn't advance her objective or achieve 1.00

00:22:33.980 anything aside from death and destruction she also inhabits spider-man's ex-girlfriend has her 1.00

00:22:38.640 kiss spider-man without her consent by the way and then throws her off her roof and she causes 0.83

00:22:44.020 another random guy, just some poor guy, some random guy to step into traffic and get flattened

00:22:50.440 by a moving vehicle. So on paper, this is one of the most evil and murderous villains in the

00:22:56.860 history of comic book movies. And yet she gets off scot-free. There's no justice at all. She's

00:23:04.220 a good guy. We're meant to believe she has a heart of gold the whole time. Aside from like the murder

00:23:08.200 and attempted murder of countless innocent civilians,

00:23:11.980 she really means well.

00:23:14.240 Now, Spider-Man does not defeat the psychic

00:23:16.460 in a final battle.

00:23:18.420 There is no final battle.

00:23:19.900 Instead, the psychic leaps into Spider-Man's mind

00:23:23.180 where in Spider-Man's mind,

00:23:25.780 she meets the dearly departed Aunt May

00:23:28.260 who tells her,

00:23:30.480 who actually sits her down on a bed

00:23:32.420 and sits with her like a scene from Full House

00:23:34.600 and tells her that she's a really special person

00:23:37.820 and then teaches her about the power of self-acceptance.

00:23:42.260 Again, I'm not kidding.

00:23:44.060 That's the climax of this movie. 0.92

00:23:46.560 The villain is brought down from her murderous rage

00:23:49.540 and turned into a good guy instantly

00:23:51.520 because somebody calls her special.

00:23:55.340 Now, later on, the Punisher,

00:23:56.920 apparently inspired by all of this weepy, speechifying,

00:24:00.520 cries and tells Peter Parker that he's his best friend.

00:24:04.980 Sorry, I forgot to mention that the Punisher is in this.

00:24:06.860 it didn't really need to be mentioned because he serves no purpose and doesn't advance the

00:24:11.000 plot in the slightest bit. How could he? His only superpower is that he has guns.

00:24:17.060 What's your superpower? Oh, I have guns. Oh, wow. No one's thought of that before.

00:24:26.000 And there's not much assistance that he can offer a superhuman indestructible being who also has a

00:24:31.820 supercomputer that can do anything and solve any problem. Now, one thing these superhero movies

00:24:36.020 have never figured out, aside from, you know, how to come up with a compelling plot or compelling

00:24:39.700 dialogue or compelling characters, is how to make it so that their super-powered god creatures

00:24:46.120 are vulnerable enough that they can be plausibly hurt or helped by other characters who aren't

00:24:52.540 superhuman. This is a nut that Marvel has never cracked, and that's why they, like, threw a guy

00:24:59.200 into the Avengers whose only power is that he's a pretty good shot with a bow and arrow,

00:25:03.440 and he's somehow supposed to provide invaluable contributions to a group that also includes

00:25:09.180 Thor an intergalactic deity who has the unlimited power to do anything and doesn't even need the

00:25:15.580 help of a Samsung Galaxy phone much less a short guy with a weapon that hasn't been relevant in

00:25:19.900 combat for 500 years all that to say the Punisher has no reason to be in this movie but he's another

00:25:25.520 selling point to put in the trailer and that's all the purpose he really needs to serve so the

00:25:31.500 movie ends with Peter Parker and Jean Grey learning that it's okay to be different. Yes, that is very

00:25:39.820 close to an actual line in this movie, a movie that is critically acclaimed and hailed as one of

00:25:47.660 the best Spider-Man films of all time, which is a bit like bragging that the meal you just ate for

00:25:53.460 lunch was the best gas station hot dog you ever had in Cleveland. Now that said, you know, I did

00:25:58.520 feel inspired by the message in a certain way. After all, everybody else seems to love this

00:26:05.580 movie. It has a 90% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It has a 98% audience score. 98% of

00:26:13.540 the comments under this video right now are almost certainly angry, bordering on homicidal.

00:26:20.220 And so that puts me firmly in the minority. It makes me different. But like Aunt May told the

00:26:27.040 serial killer psychic with a heart of gold, it's okay to be different. If only Marvel Studios would

00:26:33.320 take its own advice, if only it would ever make a movie that takes even the smallest risk or the

00:26:38.760 slightest creative gamble or tries to say anything but the vaguest hallmark platitude. But why would

00:26:45.980 it do that when it can put in no effort, expend zero creative energy, and still make a zillion

00:26:51.240 dollars. That's the real moral of this story. And the other moral is that in my house, we need to

00:26:58.880 go back to me picking the movies. I mean, Spider-Man? Just walk up to him and shoot him in the head.

00:27:05.340 Suit yourself. 1.00

The Matt Walsh Show - August 08, 2026

Should You See the ＂New＂ Spider-Man Movie？

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