Spider-Man Brand New Day Review

[00:00:00] This is Movies on TV Podcast Industries with our spoiler-filled discussion of Spider-Man Brand New Day. I didn't read you that letter because I didn't want anything like that to happen to you. That's not really your decision. I know it's not, but you mean everything to me. And I've been trying to live my life without you, but I can't. I love you.

[00:00:29] So, this spell or whatever it is that you did, all these memories that you're saying that we have together, I don't have them.

[00:00:53] And I do see why, you know, she would love you, the girl you wrote that letter to, but I understand that you did what you had to do to protect her. And for that, I'm so grateful.

[00:01:17] But I don't love you. I don't even know you.

[00:01:30] Welcome back, fellow Spidey fans, webheads and everything Marvel aficionados.

[00:01:58] This is Movies on TV Podcast Industries and we're having our spoiler-filled discussion of Spider-Man Brand New Day. The 38th, yes, you heard that correct. The 38th movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I am one of your hosts, Chris. I am one of your other hosts, Derek. Welcome back. Yes, hello there, Spidey fans and fellow Defenders. I am your third and final host, John.

[00:02:26] And we're going to be talking big potatoes on this one, aren't we? Yes, we are. Yes. Big potatoes with small potatoes, you know. It's all small potatoes. We look at the big, big potatoes. We love our potatoes here. We certainly do. On TV Podcast Industries. When you want to talk about potatoes, come to the Irish podcast. That's what I'd say. Exactly. And I think I was crying small potatoes there at that intro. Oh, yeah. I know. I was going to say, one way to start. Where to start off, you know, really hitting the heartstrings. Yes, yes.

[00:02:56] We've grown up. Spider-Man's grown up. All the actors are now in their 30s or getting close to 30s. So they're all going through their emotional core movements now. So this was a bit more of an emotional movie than I think I was expecting going into it. Yes. And actually, Tom Holland had a little swall about him in the Spidey series as well, actually. He's looking good, but he certainly doesn't look like the teenage Spidey that he did. I agree. Like some of those flashbacks and you went, oh, my God.

[00:03:26] He was a child when he started this. He's kind of, he's hitting the Marvel. He is a Spider-Man. Yeah. He is Spider-Man now. And he's hitting the Marvel sort of tradition of having a little bit of swall somewhere, whether it's swall Groot and sort of like a tempered swall Spider-Man. Because he still looked quite lithe. He did, of course. But there was one bit where he was like a bit swall. Was that when Yelena did see his small potatoes? No, no.

[00:03:55] There was no potatoes involved. It was him in the suit rather than out of it speaking with Yelena. Right. I see. In her office. Which I wish I had an office like that. Well, hopefully you have all seen this movie now because we've spoiled one of the major cameos that's in it, which is the wonderful Yelena Blova appearing in the movie. Spoilers. Yeah. Yeah. Florence Pugh. For if rumors are to be believed, seeing him in a state of undress once again.

[00:04:24] Again, rumors. Rumors. What's the rumor, Chris? I want to know because not everybody here will be aware of what the rumor could have been. Supposedly, Florence Pugh and Tom Holland had a thing before his time with his current now wife. His wife, yes. Zendaya. Yeah. So, quite an interesting and fun thing if you think that his current wife and his ex-girlfriend

[00:04:51] are in the same film and he is in a state of undress with both of them. They're in the same universe and they've both seen his big potatoes. Yes. Oh my goodness. Or small potatoes. Or small potatoes. Small potatoes. You know, relative potatoes. And I also do love the little comic book nod as well that himself and Black Widow, Spider-Man and Black Widow did have a relationship in the comic books and now here they are meeting up. The new Black Widow in the universe meeting up with Spider-Man. So, you never know. Yes. That might happen in the future. No, no, no.

[00:05:18] No, 100% now that his love of his life is no longer in love with him. Well, we are spoiling everything about the movie so we should really get into discussing the movie and if you haven't subscribed to the podcast you can pop on over to our website at tvpodcastindustries.com and subscribe over there. Occasionally we do podcast more than once a month and hopefully we'll get back to doing that. Lanterns is coming up from DC, the new TV show coming up on HBO which we're hoping to start covering. It's coming out next week as we record this podcast.

[00:05:46] Really interested to see what DC will deliver with their first big TV show, live action TV show since Peacemaker. Yes. Yes, I'd be interested in that and also of course it will be a return to our Gotham TV podcast handle where we do talk about the DC universe. That's right. Occasionally, not as often as the Marvel. Well, yes. We changed it over to Penguin on TV Podcast Industries and that the Penguin season 2 is

[00:06:14] going to be about seven years time, I think, if it ever gets done. And that's if Matt Reeves' Batman 2 ever gets done. And it keeps us ticking back, doesn't it really? And speaking of Marvel things, we will know the upcoming slate for the remainder of the year very soon as Marvel's D23 is happening this weekend in Anaheim.

[00:06:40] And there is multiple Marvel panels, multiple Marvel keynotes, if you will. We are expecting a final date and trailer for Vision Quest. That's right. Supposedly. And their rumour is two additional special presentation reveals. Interesting.

[00:07:04] So we have, I think, the rumoured date is October 16th for Vision Quest. I think that's the date that's been out there. So that's probably going to be confirmed. But at least we'll see a trailer this weekend. That'll be cool. The other big announcement that came out today from Marvel and from Disney is that Kevin Smith's going to be doing a crossover of Marvel and Star Wars beginning in January next year. Five-issue series that he's written. It's all coming. Oh, my God. I know. How crazy is that? I can't wait.

[00:07:32] Luke Skywalker on the artwork looked like a Chinese knockoff. It doesn't look great. No. It doesn't look great. But the concept is effectively Doctor Doom and Darth Vader are teaming up. And Thanos. And Thanos and Venom. Yeah, all the villains teaming up together. So that'll be very interesting. But yes, lots of interesting stuff coming up at T23. For Disney and for Marvel. Could be genius. Could be an absolute train smash. Or dare I say it, a Star Destroyer smash. Yeah, could be.

[00:07:59] I will quickly add, because we're going to go into our spoiler-filled discussion of Spider-Man Brand New Day, that the Jays of Future Past comic line is, which is currently him, written by Kevin Smith, it's Jane Silent Bob in the Marvel kind of X-Men universe, is surprisingly good. Well, you know, Kevin Smith has definitely got some great books in the Marvel universe.

[00:08:27] He wrote Daredevil for a very long time, and one of his storylines has been adapted into the Daredevil series. So he is a well-known Marvel writer. It's not just that he was a filmmaker that went on to write some good comic books. He's written some of the most well-respected comic books. So very intrigued to see what he might do with two universes crossing over, like Star Wars and the Marvel universe, starting in January next year. So going on for five months for the 50th anniversary of Star Wars, which is definitely making me feel quite old.

[00:08:56] But with that, let's get into our chat all about this brand new Marvel movie, Spider-Man Brand New Day. Yes. Derek, what are some of the production details? This is a relatively easy one. The movie was directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, who's taken over from John Watts, who directed the first three Spider-Man home movies. He is the director of Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings. He also directed the first two episodes of Wonder Man and was one of the creators of that show.

[00:09:24] Unfortunately, Wonder Man season two has officially been cancelled. We will not get a second season of that excellent TV show. Rumour has it that they just didn't get enough love from Emmy Awards. They thought they were going to get a hell of a lot more awards because it was a show about moviemaking. They thought they were going to get a lot more nominations. And it turned out that the only nomination that they really got was for the excellent performance of Yaha Abdul-Mateen, who absolutely deserved the award, but they expected a lot more. So they cancelled it based on that.

[00:09:52] No conviction, I'm afraid, up at the top. That would have been cool. But we do know we will get a Shang-Chi 2 coming from Destin Daniel Cretton in the future. So that has been confirmed. We will be seeing more of Shang-Chi. He says himself there should have been at least two movies by now. But the reason why there isn't, and people keep forgetting this, the reason why there isn't a second Shang-Chi movie is because Destin Daniel Cretton was supposed to be directing the two big Avengers projects. He was tapped to do the Kang Dynasty. He was going to be the one leading the Avengers. That's how much Marvel loved this guy.

[00:10:22] And it was all taken away from when the Kang Dynasty fell apart. And they decided to go running back to the Russos instead. And gave Destin Daniel Cretton the proverbial boot. But he kind of landed on his feet getting Spider-Man, didn't he? Oh, absolutely. Big time. And doing Wonder Man. I mean, he's done some really, really good stuff. It feels like smaller projects when he had the Avengers coming up to get told to go over and deal with Sodi and the Sodi Spider-verse.

[00:10:49] The Kang Dynasty, what happened there, has nothing to do with him. Everything to do with the man who was supposed to be Kang. So it's a little strange. But look, I think this director is superb. I've loved most of the, if not all of the projects he's done. Certainly around Marvel with Shang-Chi, Wonder Man, and... Spoilers. Now Spider-Man, a brand new day. Exactly. So, yeah. Good on him. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:18] And interestingly, the writers of this movie, just a great one to point out, the writers of this movie, Chris McKenna and Eric Summers, have been working on all the projects with Tom Holland's Spider-Man. They worked all the way back with Marvel on Ant-Man and the Wasp, but then moved on to getting writing credits on the original Homecoming. And they were the writers for Spider-Man Far From Home and Spider-Man No Way Home. So they've been dealing with the Tom Holland universe for a very long time. I know there was a gap here of about five years between this and the last movie. No pun intended.

[00:11:48] Yes, but they are the ones that were always bringing this story to life. So they are officially the Sony Marvel writers for Spider-Man. They are the people that you tap. So that's why everything feels quite consistent in their universe, doesn't it? I strongly agree in terms of that. I think they've built what I think will end up being kind of probably two strong trilogies.

[00:12:15] Whatever we're calling the home trilogy and then the day trilogy. Maybe, yeah. Like the final days or whatever they do to kind of close it off. Spider-Man end of days, yes. Yeah. Yeah. But I do think they've done it and they've also understood the assignment. Absolutely. I think that's the biggest part, but we'll get deeper into that in a few minutes. Definitely. Definitely. With that, John, do you want to tell us what they gave us with your synopsis for Spider-Man? Brand new day. Sure.

[00:12:45] Four years after Doctor Strange raised Peter Parker from everyone's memory, Peter has completely committed himself to being Spider-Man. He visits Aunt May's grave, secretly checks in on Ned, Leeds and MJ at MIT and spends every other waking hour fighting crime across New York. When a tank goes on a rampage, Spider-Man first has to stop vigilante Frank Castle before stopping the tank. Inside, Peter finds a confused woman and something much stranger.

[00:13:14] An unseen entity that jumps from body to body inside the Department of Damage Control, eventually freeing Mac Gargan, aka the Scorpion. Jaina Bilova tells Peter this isn't ordinary mind control. It's small potatoes, but the attacks are connected to something called VMAX. Stranger things get even more complicated when Ned returns to New York.

[00:13:39] Peter secretly follows him to a housewarming party, where he also sees MJ, now with another boyfriend. The sight of her sends Peter spiralling, and soon his own spider DNA begins to mutate. With help from Dr. Bruce Banner, Peter manages to create a device to suppress the changes. But when Spider-Man finally tracks the entity to the Scorpion, it possesses MJ and threatens to kill her. Peter discovers the truth.

[00:14:06] The entity is actually the mutant Jean Grey, who is searching Damage Control for VMAX. Jean takes control of the Hulk, leading to a huge fight with Spider-Man and Frank Castle. They eventually separate Jean from Hulk, but something goes horribly wrong. No Banner, no girl, only Hulk. Peter manages to calm Hulk and capture Jean, but she mentions the name Sarah before passing out.

[00:14:34] With help from MJ and Yelena, Peter discovers that Sarah is Jean's missing sister, who was experimented on by Damage Control and Director Metzger. And the mysterious VMAX? It's nothing more than words written on the air conditioning unit in the room where Sarah died. When Jean learns the truth, her grief explodes into rage, and she takes control of a kilometre of New York and its citizens.

[00:15:01] Peter fights his way through mind-controlled hand ninjas to reach her, then allows Jean inside his mind. There, through memories of Aunt May, Peter convinces Jean that she is loved and promises to help her. But before he can save her, Frank Castle takes a sniper shot at Jean. Peter uses his new abilities to get Jean out of the way and takes the bullet himself. Jean keeps him alive long enough for the doctors at Metro General Hospital to save him.

[00:15:31] When Peter wakes up, Frank helps him escape as New York celebrates Spider-Man as a hero. Peter returns to his anonymous life until he runs into Ned at a local bodega. This time, Peter introduces himself. He uses their old handshake, and Ned immediately knows how to complete it. For just a moment, it seems like his oldest friend might just remember him after all. Yay! Happy moment! Yay!

[00:16:03] Yes, nice ending to the movie there, isn't it? Which I'm sure we'll talk about in major detail as we get into our points and moments from the movie. Oh yeah, definitely. Oh, 100%. Because there is so much to discuss here. Yes. This is the Loki kicking off the mutant saga. Loki? Or Loki.

[00:16:26] It is basically making Peter Parker, the Oppenheimer of the Marvel Universe going forward, with the man who's basically creating the suppression colors for mutants. Crass. Yeah, there's so much. So, should we kick off with our brand new points for this film?

[00:16:53] Yes, it is our brand new point number one. Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man. Mm-hmm. How do you feel about this opening to the movie? We have basically a three, four year period of time spent with Peter Parker, and lots and lots going on in his life, but all connected to Spider-Man. What did you think of this as the opening, Chris? I love this. This was fantastic. Four years compressed, basically, into the guts of, what, 15 minutes? Mm-hmm.

[00:17:22] Giving us an understanding of where Peter has been since. Sorry, taking it even a step further, if you add in the opening for this film, you do actually get a small montage within the Marvel credits. Yes. And the Marvel logo of things that have happened over the last three films, including some Civil War and the Avengers, Endgame, Infinity War.

[00:17:48] And getting people kind of caught up on the idea that Peter Parker has disappeared in this time. I think the second time I was watching it, you notice that there's moments with himself and MJ where he's disappearing from photographs in just that opening credits scene. So you'll see that effectively in MJ's life and in Ned's life specifically, they'll have loads of photographs of just them sitting on their own in various locations because Peter has disappeared out of their lives. I did wonder that. Yeah.

[00:18:15] And I mean, I'm glad that it kind of captured that because I was thinking, is it the case where it's just the memory and they're going, well, who's that kid? It's that guy. I can't remember his name, but he was right beside me all the time. No? No, no, he's gone. So he is wiped out absolutely thoroughly. Yeah. From existence. Yes. So Peter Parker is no more. Spider-Man has remained. Spider-Man was around. Spider-Man did save them when they were in Europe. Or Titanite Monkey saved them when they were in Europe.

[00:18:44] Spider-Man saved them in Washington, D.C. And I love, you know, that's part of the plot of the movie is that for the last couple of years, Ned has been trying to work out, why the hell is Spider-Man saving me and MJ? Why are we important to him? Because they have no memory of any connection with him at all. And MJ deduces that she must somehow possibly know Spider-Man as well because of all the rescues.

[00:19:10] Like when it starts to get sort of further on just before she gets controlled by the mysterious figure, a.k.a. Jean Grey. She does deduce something, but I love that Ned suspects that it's Flash Thompson or his teacher in school. That must be one of the two of them because we know he's from Koreans. We know he must know us. And they're the only two people that we don't know enough about that we're on the school trip and we're close to us all the time.

[00:19:39] So I do love the idea that we do have a potential Flash Thompson as Spider-Man in this universe as well. Oh, and he may be Agent Venom in a very near future. He may be. So look, I really enjoyed this opening because it sets up the history of the MCU in terms of the Spidey, this more... Everyone kept saying this in some of the marketing and the kind of buildup, but this was a more grounded Spider-Man story.

[00:20:08] And I tend to agree. This is less cosmic, less Iron Man. This type of story is almost something the Spider-Man I grew up with. Right. It's that arc where he was the out of college, kind of early 20s, living paycheck to paycheck. Yeah. Obviously, we don't get the bugle in this, but... Yeah, he doesn't even have a job in this one. Yeah, exactly. But you get DeWolf. Yeah.

[00:20:37] And DeWolf is a fantastic character. And one of... Actually, quick recommendation. The final days of DeWolf? Or the... Is that the name of the story? Or is it the death of DeWolf? It might even be more specific at the death of DeWolf. Is that Peter David, I think? Yeah. Yeah. One of... One of the big writers, definitely. Yeah. Exactly. But she's been around for years. She was in Marvel Team Up number 48, I have in my notes there. That was her first appearance. And that's back in the 70s. So, yeah.

[00:21:06] She's been around for a very long time as the member of the police force that allows Peter Parker to work alongside them. So, she's always been that kind of supporter. But she's had some really interesting stories. So, cool to have the character played here by the actress from The Bear as well. So, you might recognize her. Very cool. One of the things that I absolutely love about these moments, we've been speculating for months among ourselves. Because we don't usually do speculation on what's coming up in the movies.

[00:21:32] But we've been speculating ourselves about what's coming up in this movie connected to the stuff that we've been covering. Like The Punisher and like Daredevil Born Again. And it turns out, actually, most of the things that are being referenced in the trailers and everything coming up to here is literally just that first 15 minutes. So, we see Mayor Sheila giving Spider-Man the key to the city while he's going around saving loads of people during those three years.

[00:21:57] And we still don't actually know whether that's before Kingpin took over or after Kingpin disappeared at the end of Spider-Man Brand New Day. We know he got the key to the city from Sheila. But that is literally the only scene we see of Sabrina Guevara in the movie is the one that was in the trailer that we spotted four and a half months ago. So, how sad. Yeah. I mean, she's definitely more than just an advisor. Because in Daredevil Born Again, she's just an advisor. So, she wouldn't be giving him the key to the city.

[00:22:26] It would be a ceremonial thing. So, she has to be the mayor. Yeah. It's just not really as connected or maybe just not. It's not given the reference point for us to go, yeah, it's after Mere Fisk. But there's nothing to reference Mere Fisk. So, I think it is after, I would say. It could be. It's just because of the four-year period that we're just kind of seeing in a splash. The other big speculation that was happening in the lead up to this was that this movie was going to be Spider-Man versus the Sinister Six.

[00:22:56] Something that has been talked about in movies since back in the 90s. Because so many actors are being brought back as their characters from comic books. We're going to be seeing each of the members of the Sinister Six. The big one here was going to be Scorpion coming back from Homecoming. We were going to have Tombstone in there. Where pretty much all of these characters are just seen in flashes. And they do a great thing with them, though, which I absolutely love.

[00:23:25] They do comic book covers of these characters fighting against Spider-Man in the montage. They are so cool looking. I really, really love this touch that they have. Before the story begins, let's have some time with Spider-Man fighting against all of his rogues gallery in that four years. While he's just being Spider-Man and not being Peter Parker. Can we just quickly... This is one of the bits I wanted to call out about Destin Daniel Cretton's vision. His cinematography and his style in this.

[00:23:55] Which is, we got to see a lot of that with his action. His view on action with Shang-Chi. And his over-stylized fight choreography. His over-stylized. And kind of over... And I'm saying over-stylized in a good way. It's just stylized. It's just stylized. But his choice here of how he portrays Spider-Man swinging. The agility.

[00:24:25] That is one of the key pieces. When you talk about the comic book covers coming to life. Because we've seen some level of agility and stuff from previous Spider-Man films. And this was just a step up onto itself. Yeah, absolutely. In that, like, if we think about... And we saw it in the trailers.

[00:24:50] That first scene where Peter Parker is responding to what is going to be the damage control tank piece. Where he jumps off the building. And he does this slide down. And he is going... We go inside his mask. And you see through his eyes. And partially of his eyes. Weird camera choice. But it works really well. It's so... Just very much reminded me of that kind of Tony Stark.

[00:25:19] When we first saw him in Iron Man 1. Yeah. But just the choice of seeing him fall and swing. And almost... What I feel is the closest we have got to... The closest we've got to almost the Insomniac Spider-Man games. Yes. To portraying the speed. And that kind of wind rushing piece of Spider-Man swinging. Yeah. And his literally rush through.

[00:25:48] The closest we've ever got before that, I feel, was the Andrew Garfield films. Where he kind of, at the end, is very happy and swings off. And it was also... I think it was the end of the second one, actually. Right. Right. Where he's doing that. This is another level. Like, they're showing some of the behind the scenes stuff. And the filming that's done is of the stuntman or Tom Holland. Whichever one, potentially. Actually swinging through the streets with a crane camera.

[00:26:16] Backing up along the streets with, effectively, him looking like Spider-Man. Going through the streets. Live action. It's not all CGI. I'm sure it's enhanced as well. But you can really feel that motion. It's incredible. And all those scenes where they do the cover of the comic books and they match those poses. Again, all done practically by Tom Holland. They filmed it in slow motion. In extreme slow motion. So they could get the exact shot. And apparently Tom Holland was doing those poses 40, 50 times just to get it exactly right.

[00:26:45] He's really dedicated. Now that he's got the massive paycheck. And I'm sure a cut of the profits. He's really dedicated to delivering the best possible Spider-Man that he can deliver. And he took inspiration from the Insomniac video games. He talks about some of the ending moves that you see Spider-Man doing on some of the characters. Those are things you can do in the video games. So he specifically took inspiration from the PlayStation game in those scenes as well. It's totally evident. Brilliant. Yeah. But I also think it did evoke the Tobey Maguire stuff.

[00:27:14] I mean, there was a lot made at the time of him swinging around New York. Absolutely. I think they really lent into that. Did more of that. And the same with Andrew Garfield. So I think they do evoke that. It's the same way, I think, that they've used the past movies to inform this, like the comics. And like they have done and like they've described around the suit, doing the Spidey suit.

[00:27:41] So I think that's just really good for the director to be using all those palettes at his disposable. Whether it's the game, the previous movies, the comics and so on. Absolutely. So, I mean, that's just really good. And I think there's a lot in here that evokes different parts of the, I guess, the Tobey Maguire franchise. Absolutely.

[00:28:07] And even, you know, there's something that obviously we'll talk about later on, his new way of creating webs. That's a nod back to Tobey Maguire's version of Spider-Man. And he even calls it out. He goes, oh, well, Spidey 2 had these. They can't be that bad. You know? So that's a nod back to their meeting in No Way Home as well. But yeah, some of the cool stuff in this opening sequence as well. There's lots of little nods to the early MCU, I think, in these scenes.

[00:28:35] We see the tour bus that's driving down the street talking to the tourists saying that this is, it's in New York, of course. And they call out that the street was destroyed during the Battle of New York, which was in the Avengers, of course. And we have Spidey smacking on the side of the bus. And that was very similar to when Baron Mordo and Strange hit the side of the bus back in Doctor Strange in the Stan Lee cameo, you might remember from the original Doctor Strange movie.

[00:28:58] And we see a girl on the bus reading a book there who looks quite similar to Rogue from the X-Men in the place of where Stan Lee would have been. So it's possible she's got the white hair, white hair in the front and brown in the back. So it's possible that's the reason why they linger on her there is because that's where Stan Lee was placed before. And maybe this is another X-Men character that we're having in there. But that's cool. And also the other big thing, I think, that they're alluding to here.

[00:29:27] We had always learned once from when Spidey was brought into the Avengers back in Civil War by Tony Stark that he was the, not the apprentice, but he was the future Tony Stark in this universe. Tony Stark had seen something very special about Peter Parker and something that reminded him of him. And here we actually see Peter creating his own suit.

[00:29:50] He's created his own internal AI now, now called EV, voiced by Naomi Watts, who worked together with Tony, with Tom Holland on his first movie back when he was about 12, wasn't it? The Impossible. Oh my God, yeah. So Naomi Watts coming back to voice the AI in the chair that Peter Parker creates for himself. So he is now taking over since Tony Stark's no longer there. He's doing it all himself.

[00:30:16] He's able to create all the things that Tony was able to create in his room as Iron Man. He's able to do them for himself as Spider-Man. So a nice little touch. We see a more grown-up version of this character, not depending on anybody else, which is part of the problem as well for the character, right? Yeah. And this kind of leans back into that, as I was saying, that kind of more grounded kind of...

[00:30:44] Poor is too much of a kind of mean thing to say, but the more the bootstrap Spider-Man. Right. Except Spider-Man with a 3D printer who can also kind of 3D print his own costume and things like that. Yeah. Versus where we did see him at the end of the last trilogy, his suit was hand-stitched out of a very shiny material. Here it is kind of 3D printed. And it's a nice upgrade there.

[00:31:12] You've seen that upgrade over the time of four years. It makes sense. Absolutely. But it does get us from, as we say, the four years prior up to modern day, where we are, where he responds to a runaway tank. And that kind of gets us to our next kind of brand new point, if you will. In 2029 as well. Yeah. So just to make the point, we're aligned now with this Spider-Man, with where we are in the rest of the universe.

[00:31:42] We're up in about 2029, 2028, 2029, which is where we saw the New Avengers or the Thunderbolts were in around that period as well. So we're slightly in the future still with the MCU, but it's about 28, 29. One tiny last thing before we move on. It would be remiss of us to point out that all the way through this, we see Peter checking in on Net Leeds and MJ all the way throughout.

[00:32:07] He's keeping himself to himself, not interacting with anybody other than Gene DeWolf, who doesn't even know his name. But he is checking in on Net, who is effectively broadcasting what's going on in his stories on Instagram to one or two people who are watching. But I love that himself and MJ are still really close and they kept up their friendship, even with Peter being around. I think that's really cool to keep up with them as they go through their life in MIT.

[00:32:33] And even that period where every young man grows a terrible, terrible goatee at the bottom of their head until their friend goes, what the hell is that? Just shave it off, which is what MJ does for Net. All right, let's get into our brand new point. Number two. Our first big action scene of the movie, the damage control breakout. And our introduction to the one and only Punisher. Yes.

[00:33:02] A PG-13 Punisher. Well, a good, let's just say it right here, in case you didn't hear our Punisher brand new day podcast, I am so much happier with this version of Frank Castle than the crap they put on to Disney Plus for 45 minutes. So well done for bringing Frank Castle into Spider-Man. And it can't be overstated that Punisher began in the Spider-Man comic books. He didn't start out as this Vietnam vet who killed his family and went off on a killing spree, killing everybody.

[00:33:30] He was a person that was an antagonist for Spider-Man in a Spider-Man comic. So this is where he belongs. All the other versions of Punisher as the adult character who just cuts people's heads off and shoots people because that's what he chooses to do. Those are all different versions of the Punisher than where he began. So I'm delighted to see him in here. I know it's just a bit of fun. I know the two actors know each other really well. They both did the auditions for the MCU together back when they first met.

[00:33:58] So it's great to see Jon Bernthal and Tom Holland back together on screen after all this time. They did also have a big moment this year in the Odyssey. So they're having a big year together this year, aren't they? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I still haven't seen the Odyssey, so apologies for that. Well, Chris, it's the other best and Jon Bernthal and Tom Holland movie of the year. Yeah, the other. This was more important to see this multiple times. Two billion dollar movies this year that they have under their belt.

[00:34:28] That's incredible. I'm going to agree with you. This version of the Punisher is so much better. Yeah. Go kick rocks. Like, that is potentially one of the best quotes from Frank Castle and Jon Bernthal in a long time. And yeah, no, look, I'm absolutely loving it. This, we see a fantastic action sequence.

[00:34:57] Again, that was originally filmed in Glasgow, I think it was. That's right. Of Tom Holland and Spider-Man swinging through the air, stopping this rogue tank. We see, then we see Punisher come up behind him. We get some nice go home Frank back and forth banter between Peter Parker or just, sorry, between Spidey and the Punisher. Mm-hmm. So, kind of straight away just setting up that they have interacted.

[00:35:27] They know each other now within these four years. And that this is, it does let us know as well. And again, why it leads me to believe that this is post-anti-vigilante task force, post- It is. Daredevil, and very much kind of way, like, a bit early is Frank is out and operating pretty openly. Yeah. If he's going after a rogue tank. Absolutely.

[00:35:53] So, seeing this just brought, again, and I've used this, if anyone's listened to our previous Spider-Man kind of coverage in the films, I love Spider-Man. I love the lore. I love that universe. It's one of my, he is my favorite character. character, this felt like a comic book scene come to life. Without a doubt, absolutely. Like, it's just so well done. Yeah.

[00:36:18] And very well decided about, okay, well, how is this, these two characters going to interact? How is a Peter Parker going to try and stop an APC tank going down? And then you have DeWolf going, are you going to stop this? Are you going to finish this? He goes, I'm trying. Very, very good. It was. It was.

[00:36:42] You know, I love the little allusions to the fact that, you know, every time we've seen Frank Castle, he will more likely either grunt or swear. Right. That's kind of all the dialogue we got from him in the last movie. So, initially, the first thing that Spidey does is cover his mouth so he can't say the F word. Right. So, that's a fun way to introduce him. And I know the history of the two of those characters together as well.

[00:37:04] We still don't know, even by the end of the movie, we don't know how Peter saved Frank Castle at that incident that they mention a few times. So, maybe, maybe that will be when Tom Holland appears on Disney Plus Punisher show in the future. He says he wants to do it. So, maybe they'll tell the story of how Peter Parker saved Frank Castle. That'd be kind of cool. Or it's going to go on for years like we're the best between Hawkeye and Black Widow. Yeah.

[00:37:33] And we don't learn until right at the end. They can barely create what they need to anyway. So, they're not going to do it. Yeah, never mind. But I agree. I think the Punisher is way better here than his solo outing, unfortunately. But, yeah, it was just a great little action sequence. Love. Yeah, the little... I mean, even though it is like PG-13, you know, the fact that, as you say, he mouths up just as he's about to swear. And we all know what he's going to say.

[00:38:01] I mean, even later on as it moves towards the end of the movie, you know, he does what the Punisher would do, which is he goes for the gun first. Yeah. And to take out the threat. Exactly. So, for me, this is way kind of just, like, on point. Kind of like the stuff around the hospital, I guess. I can see he was trying to make amends here for what he did. Absolutely.

[00:38:30] I think here in this sort of little chase scene with the tank, really good. I think for me, though, the more intriguing thing on here is who's the antagonist here? Who's behind this? The intrigue here around the person that is effectively controlling this old lady who is there in the tank. So, not expecting any of this.

[00:38:57] And even just in these initial moments where you just see this hooded figure. Not a clue. Any suspicions when you were watching the first time? No, nothing. Until it was revealed. Yeah. And actually, but I mean, we'll get to those points a bit later. But I think here, at least in this moment, it's seeing this. I'm like, I was there going, who's got? I mean, I did think, who's got this mind control? But I just did not think of the X-Men. Right. Because...

[00:39:27] It feels like a big thing to put in a Spider-Man movie, doesn't it? Exactly. And if I'm totally honest, I love the X-Men movies. I never really followed them in comics. Yeah. Other than where they sort of, you know... Crossover. Yeah, exactly. Crossovers or transected with something that I was watching. Or Civil War or something like that. Or Civil War. Exactly. I mean, House of M is probably the one I really did get into. The book. Because it was phenomenal. But, like... So, I just...

[00:39:56] I didn't even have them on my radar. I think maybe as well, just because it's Sony. Like you say, it's not just that it's Spider-Man, but it's Sony Marvel co-production. I was like, they were, you know, wanting it all for themselves, Marvel Studios. But I like how they're drip feeding, actually. Yeah. I think it's just a different way of doing the X-Men. It makes it better for me, personally. Yeah.

[00:40:23] However, at this moment, I was more excited going, who is this person? Yeah. And this is quite cool. That they can move through people's bodies. You know, for me, I was thinking around certain, like, magical beings. Certainly given the Doctor Strange connections and so on. Absolutely.

[00:40:48] And, you know, in case you didn't see Ironheart, we did have a character called The Hood, you know. Quite recently in there, you know, he had some magical powers. This character's wearing a hood. So there was a moment where I was like, have they brought the hood over from Ironheart into this movie, you know. But I don't know. There's also the big one, because this was done in another movie as well.

[00:41:10] It was done in Venom, The Last Dance, or in Venom, where you see the symbiote jumping between people in quite a similar way, as you see this entity jumping between the bodies. And I was like, so I was wondering, was it going to be one of the symbiotes that had come over into the Spider universe? And this was the big hidden villain for the movie was going to be that, you know. Well, I also was thinking Bob from The Thunderbolts. Right. Because with having Yelena in there, I just, I thought, oh, maybe.

[00:41:40] And also just because you had that whole thing with the hood and the blackness. Like, you didn't. Black eyes, yeah. You didn't see the face. I mean, it was, for obvious reasons, hiding the identity. But, I mean, I just thought, is this something where Bob's depressive self has kind of freed himself? Or doing something like a recce for his own purposes, you know, that Bob's not fully in control here.

[00:42:10] Centuries back, yeah. And the void. Yeah, that's it, the void. I thought maybe it's that. So, I liked it. I mean, I think if you're going to bring intrigue into Spider-Man, do it in a good way. And to be honest as well, for me, what made it even better, and we'll come to it later, is the payoff, actually.

[00:42:30] But I loved this jumping from people to people in damage control as they move through, taunting Spider-Man, which his best villains have always taunted him. Like, I loved that. Really just lent into all of that. And so, I really enjoyed this bit. And, of course, then the follow-up to it with the big potato, small potatoes, and with Yelena and her office. Absolutely.

[00:42:59] We should all have offices in a sauna. You just want to see swallows on Holland. That's all. The Russian sauna. Back into my Turkish bath. Genuinely, it's quite smart. The Irish bath. Genuinely, it is quite a smart way to find out whether people are carrying weapons when they're coming in to see you, right? So, strip yourself naked. Get into the pool with me. I do love that she's leaning into the sexier side of Black Widow.

[00:43:28] You know, that's always been something of the Black Widow character from comics. So, I love that she's leaning into that by her. She's naked in the sauna the whole time, right? She's lying in the pool. No problem at all. Come on in. You might be embarrassed, but I'm not. You know, that kind of thing. That's very funny. And, yeah, the way he plays it as well, where we see Spidey with the mask still on again. Peter doesn't want to have anybody know his identity since it's all been wiped from everybody. So, he's wearing the mask in case anybody could work out who he is next.

[00:43:58] Well, he wears both masks, doesn't he? Because the other identity is also hidden. But not his belly button. No, not his belly button. His potatoes. I think even, like, it's only very minor, like, where you see ultimately Yelena's receptionists. Where there's these, like, two old sort of weather people. Crotchety Russians. Women.

[00:44:25] And just that little interaction there with Peter Parker and Spider-Man, I just thought that was a nice little touch as well. It just kind of lent into that Russian, the Russian-ness of it all. So, that was great. And it's really interesting, isn't it? Because, you know, and maybe a little bit of outside and things you may not know about the MCU at the moment. Avengers Doomsday was supposed to be coming out before this movie.

[00:44:53] We should have had Avengers Doomsday followed by this and then going into Secret Wars. Those are the approach of how they're originally going to happen. But the restos needed a bit more time, so they moved this out. Sony was not going to stop this movie from coming out this summer. They wanted it out. They wanted the money. So, there's a couple of things that are in here that I wonder, you know, is it telling us things about Doomsday coming up this year? We have Yelena here talking about the new Avengers deal with all the big threats. They don't deal with small potatoes. They deal with big potatoes.

[00:45:21] So, that's a great joke when you think about it in the movie context that's here. But knowing that Doomsday is coming up this year, we have a battle of multiple Avengers teams potentially on the cards. We've seen them in the trailer, all these multiple Avengers teams. But now we know after that, Yelena's talking to Spidey about the new Avengers being the team that deal with the big threats. So, is she telling them the new Avengers win and she's the leader of that team now? Potentially, that's what's going on. So, I like that.

[00:45:50] Or the other possibility, which is quite easy to get one actor down to come and film a scene to tie the whole thing together. So, maybe this was just an added scene after they realized they were moving the date. Because that could absolutely be happening as well. Well, so, again, rumors.

[00:46:06] Rumor is that this was added because everyone was like, how are you making a grounded Spider-Man story with, at that point, the rumor, a now correct corroborated rumor of who Sadie Sink was playing. A correct Mark Ruffalo cameo. Wasn't he a hook? A hook? Oh, it's Rufio. Sorry. Rufio.

[00:46:37] And everyone was like, how? Like, Spider-Man is supposed to be grounded. He's supposed to be a New York champion. What is going on? So, apparently, this was a, hey, we're going to explain that Spider-Man looks after small potatoes and the Avengers are big potatoes. And they're separating, again, Spider-Man from, he will be part of some of those bigger pieces. But this is a contained storyline. He won't be called in for Doomsday because nobody knows how to reach him. Yes, exactly.

[00:47:06] But he's, well, yeah. And then this supposedly, again, in the timeline is pre, post-Thunderbolt film, but pre the end tag from the Thunderbolt film, the end post-credit scene where we see a ship come in.

[00:47:30] They, apparently, earlier were dealing with some, this is before they start dealing with the outer space stuff that Yelena talks about in the post-credits. Yeah. Again, that is the big potatoes. Yes. Spider-Man focuses on small potatoes. Because the post-credit is like six months after the end of the Thunderbolts movie and it connects in with a fantastic film movie as well. And the other final bit of speculation on why Yelena's here, and I really kind of get this one too.

[00:47:59] I totally understand it. Thunderbolts was an excellent movie, but only made 300 million in the box office. So Yelena's a massive character. They need to set up the leader of the new Avengers before we get to Doomsday. If people didn't see her in that movie that she made last year, put her in Spider-Man. It's made a billion quid. So more people have seen her in this movie than saw her in Thunderbolts. And she's going to be a big character in the next big movie of this year. So good idea. And as far as Pugh. It's huge.

[00:48:29] She's a great actress. Fantastic actress. But it didn't get more than 300 million for Thunderbolts, unfortunately. So put her in every movie. She's brilliant. But it's also been on Disney Plus now for a while. So as well, people will have seen it that way, I guess. But you're right. Hopefully this will inspire them as well. But it's just that reminder to everyone. Yeah, exactly. So speaking of reminders and how things from the past can come back.

[00:48:57] Should we move on to our next brand new point? Absolutely. Kissing makes me mutate. Yes. Our brand new point number three. Kissing makes me mutate. Yes. Yes. And this is going to be our discussion of Peter and Ned and MJ. The reunion. The beginning of Spider-Man's mutation and the end of his mutation. And how he is essentially being set up as the Oppenheimer.

[00:49:27] I am death. I am destroyer of worlds. Very much being setting up that he is the man to create the inhibitor collars. The inhibitor technology that will be used across the mutant saga. So let's take it straight back to the beginning. Which is Peter and MJ and Ned in MJ and Ned's apartment. So Peter's on his way doing his thing and sees Ned in a bodega.

[00:49:58] Stalks Ned all the way back to his new apartment. Just a reminder, they were in MIT in Boston. And Peter has not seen them in person for four years. And Ned happens to walk into a bodega. Which he would. You know, they're living in an area that Peter Parker can afford without a job, let's say. And they are just coming out of college. So they're probably living in similar kind of areas of New York.

[00:50:22] But there is a subway journey between where he picks up the beers and goes back to his apartment. So I guess they're living a bit far away. But yeah. Yeah. His best mate is in town. He's going to find out where he lives. Yeah. And we get to MJ and Ned are having a shindig, a shoire, a Red Cup party. And Maynard himself enters. May nerd, Chris. May nerd.

[00:50:52] That was so weird that they went with that. I mean, maybe there's something that I don't know. And May, and he's a nerd. Okay. But I love that MJ... I didn't get any of that. Because I just thought Maynard wine gums. Of course. I'm always thinking about wine gums. But no, I love that MJ corrects herself when she calls him Maynard first and then goes Maynard to him. Yeah.

[00:51:17] But there's a little moment again with himself and Ned where you see that he's very impressed with Ned's abilities to track down Spider-Man. He created the Spidey app to track Spidey around the city. You can tell, of course, Peter's still in love with MJ. I love that he's carrying the flowers that he bought for this day's visit to go and see Aunt May's grave and then hands them over to her as a housewarming gift. And she kind of looks around and I'm going, that's a bit of a weird thing. Everybody else here has brought along booze as their gift for our housewarming.

[00:51:46] You brought along flowers for me. I guess. Thanks very much. In that great way that delivers her lines. I always love her sarcastic way of delivery. She's so good. And the three of them are brilliant in this movie. All three of them are great central characters in this movie. With all the other action going on, it always comes back to Ned and MJ and Peter, really. I really love the three of them together. They're great three-handers. Yeah.

[00:52:15] And so that actual scene where we do get the three of them first kind of reintroduced to each other, where we see Ned's, that kind of conspiracy wall. He goes, I'm not crazy. I found that great because there are some amazing Easter eggs in there. I think you name it, the YouTube fans, once this comes out online, will be continued to pick apart. Oh, absolutely.

[00:52:45] The set design. But which ones did you notice when it was on screen? I definitely, I thought that wasn't a great one that I really enjoyed because it's Tom Holland. And he was in Europe for Far From Home. What Ned has written in his handwriting on top of the picture of Spider Monkey is, could he be British? Which Tom Holland, of course, is. So I love that they have a little nod to the investigation that's going on and Tom Holland himself.

[00:53:10] But yeah, he's been tracking Spider-Man for the last four years because, again, yeah, he saved him quite a lot of times. Not in a creepy tracking way. He wants to say thank you to him for saving him so many times. This does then, we get introduced to Paul, which is MJ's, in the credits he's Paul. I still believe by the time that's on home video that'll be changed to maybe Harry.

[00:53:40] Yeah. Maybe. So we get introduced to a character who is MJ's boyfriend. And in the credits he's currently Paul. Yes, maybe. He gets retcons to Harry Osborn. But very good. And the kiss shared and heard around the world in that it causes Peter Parker to have a bit of a panic attack. It does. It does.

[00:54:09] The only reason I hope it's not Paul, just so you know, Chris, is because I know Paul in the comic books. Much maligned character. He was the boyfriend of MJ. Yep. Totally understand. But it's played by Amos Fani, who played Ezra Bridger in Ahsoka. A very big character for us. We're all big Ahsoka fans. We're all big Star Wars Rebels fans. So really hoping that he wasn't cast for a three second part. And then the next time we see him, he's breaking up with MJ. I'm hoping that he has a much bigger role to play.

[00:54:39] But yeah, it's possible. Yeah. I think he'll be in the next one. Yeah. Me too. And I hope he's Harry Osborn. A.K.A. Paul. A.K.A. Paul. Maybe he's trying to hide his identity. Yeah. Well, see, this is the bit they could do, right? They could call him Paul.

[00:55:01] And much like they called at the end of the very first spoiler, where MJ becomes, MJ is called all me, my friends. He could be Paul, Harry, Osborn. Exactly. It could be something like that. And that's how he's been Paul, Paul, Paul. And then, oh, I only you go with that, Mike, because I don't want people to know my dad is Osborn. Yeah. Exactly. That's the only reason I would think it would go along those lines. Yeah.

[00:55:30] And the other thing, we do know a lot of filming from this movie was cut. I think the original cut of this was about four hours when it was originally. Yeah. It's already quite a long movie. It's over two. So they did cut quite a lot. So we may get a lot on the extras for the Blu-ray when it comes out of dates with Paul and with MJ. And the 4K, of course, yes. Get a load of that. Blu-ray. It's 4K Blu-ray, Donald. It's okay.

[00:55:59] So I really enjoyed this panic attack. Absolutely. And sorry, because this really embodies, again, we're talking about how they stylize the action and the swinging and stuff. The stylized viewpoint of someone having a panic attack who has superpowers.

[00:56:25] Being able, like, yeah, if I want to run away, I have to hobble down the street. If I had, if I was Peter Parker, yeah. And I would be able to run across rooftops and swing away. It was. And I'd go, I'm not crying. It's just the rain in my face. It's just the rain in my cheeks. And it's the wind gushing past me. This is really cool.

[00:56:49] And it's a fantastic kind of visual metaphor of him going through what he is. Yeah. What's happening to him. And we do have DeWolf talking to him about suppressing and him just focusing 24-7 on being Spider-Man and not taking a break and not just living to be himself. So this is an interesting thing. And then we see him.

[00:57:19] He full on passes out. And there are a few nods to him feeling some of these stress changes happening throughout the beginning of the film where he is kind of touching where certain gooey implementations will come out of him and tendrils. And we see him do that.

[00:57:43] We see him start getting, like, taking Advil and things like that to help with his headaches. All leading to him starting to change. He is becoming, he is mutating and gaining organic webbing because he wakes up in a web sack. Egg sack? Yeah, yeah. I don't. Yeah.

[00:58:08] Again, another, like, nice little nod back to Tobey Maguire's organic sort of webbing. I like that it freaks him out because there was just such a great discussion between the three Spider-Men around that in No Way Home. Absolutely. So I like this kind of carries through here. He instantly ran to the bathroom to check and see if it came out of his wrists or anywhere else. I kind of like the thing where he, you know, he falls down. He's starting to learn.

[00:58:38] He's trying to understand it. And there's just that image of a spider breaking out of its exoskeleton. He's kind of like saying, Evie, can you turn that off, please? Because that's, like, really freaking me out. I just thought that was quite a nice moment because he's like, is that going to happen to me? Exactly, yeah. So I kind of really like this mutation.

[00:59:01] I like the fact that he does a really Peter Parker thing, which is how can I control it? And I do like that. I like the fact, like we're saying, you know, is he the Oppenheimer for, you know, the X-Men, the bringer of doom, really? No pun intended. One minute. Around this suppression device that he sort of talks to Banner about.

[00:59:30] Again, I like that they bring the Hulk in here. It's just a nice little cameo. Well, it's more than a cameo. But I love this. I love Banner having that conversation with him. Do you realize it is different from my suppression of the gamma radiation and its effects?

[00:59:50] This is a particular thing because Peter starts to talk about it as being this sort of overarching suppression of any gene that might be different or mutate to give something different. And he kind of does that sort of moral or ethical quandary. Kind of, yeah. What we have is Professor Banner saying that he's suppressed everything.

[01:00:18] He's now just a human that has the Hulk inside in which he's suppressing. But Peter's asking him, could you choose the things to suppress? Could I go back to being Spider-Man and just suppress the things I don't want to suppress? And that's the really twisted moment of what he's saying. And Banner's going to hang on a second. You're basically saying, can you get rid of things that you don't like by creating a device that will stop whatever you choose?

[01:00:45] So who is it that chooses what the good things and the bad things are? That becomes a kind of a eugenics question, I guess. Exactly. And when you're going to have X-Men in the universe, you all have loads of different powers. Will you create the thing that will stop the X gene? Or will you create the thing that stops specific powers that are being created in the universe? So yeah. The universal inhibitor. Yeah.

[01:01:09] And especially as it plays out in this movie with how damage control have dealt with Sarah. Yes, they're deemed to be problematic for society, but this could be used as a weapon or whatever. So yeah, I kind of like this with Hulk doing his thing. Just to start the discussion as well. This isn't a definitive discussion.

[01:01:36] This will carry on probably through six or seven X-Men movies in the future. But I love the discussion begins here and we have the two opposing sides. The new science bros, Banner and Peter Parker, having this discussion and Banner kind of going, I know you can do it, but maybe you shouldn't think about doing it. Beyond that, there's also the discussion of to Peter, which is, are you then suppressing something that needs to be expressed? Yes. Exactly.

[01:02:06] And that leads to the, are you Peter Parker or are you Spider-Man quandary that we have towards the pinnacle, the culmination of the film. Because to this point, he has been suppressing Peter Parker and just be, and just becoming, just focusing on Spider-Man. Where like, he's no longer being that man.

[01:02:35] He's just expressing himself as that one place, one thing. So I, I, I like that. I like that interesting kind of take, which is we constantly talk about Spider-Man, great power, responsibility, and that will come up later. But this is an interesting new variation on that type of thing where it is, no, no, no. Are you a hero? Are you, are you a hero? Are you human?

[01:03:03] Like, are you, who, what is your identity? Yeah. And it is that kind of next step. It's an, it is one thing I will say it is interesting is they've given us Bruce Banner. They've given us Hulk. They've given us Smart Hulk. And now they've reverted. And even he was Smart Hulk up in the She-Hulk. Yeah. Yep.

[01:03:26] Up until now, he has been just kind of that, that Smart Hulk, he found the balance between, and now essentially we've said it's been pushed back to become, no, no, no, no, no. No, he's fully suppressing it to be just Bruce Banner again. No, Professor Banner. Yeah. Professor Banner. So it would be interesting. And actually towards the end of this, he is carted off somewhere, which we can chat more about later. Yeah. But yes, so.

[01:03:55] I think the great thing here is that because it, you know, it cuts through it, doesn't it? By having Hulk and Peter talk about it. It cuts through it where it's not just purely an X-Men thing. Yeah. I think it's also like you're saying, Chris, around, you know, with great powers comes great responsibility. But May was always saying that to Peter, not to Spider-Man with him in the suit. Yes, it was about his powers, but she was also expressing it to Peter.

[01:04:25] And I think what's really good here is this whole thing of, you know, am I a mutant, a mutate, human, or can I be all three? Mm-hmm.

[01:05:08] It's instead of Xavier and Magneto, you have it expressed through Hulk and Peter here in, to some degree, this never-ending conversation that happens in the X-Men movies. So it's like, this is really interesting. Absolutely. And I hope they don't. It's really important to X-Men. I get it. But I hope that it's not always just dwelt on. No. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I love that it's exactly as I bring the point in now.

[01:05:37] And also, The Shadow of Spider-Noir, which was all about a mutated Spider-Man and multiple mutations and multiple experiments creating people with powers. I love that we have this as the follow-up. And I don't think that was ever intended, that that would be the case. But it's absolutely on my mind when I was in there.

[01:05:57] I was watching it going, oh, we've just come out of a great series in the Spider-Verse set in an earlier time where we have people being experimented on and becoming powered individuals. And here we have Peter mutating or becoming a mutate or a mutant-ish version of Spider-Man. That's kind of cool, too. And one of those was the Scorpion, which I kind of quite like. Because I do like Scorpion as one of the Sinister Six and Spidey's kind of one of his nemesis.

[01:06:27] Of them, I've always liked the Scorpion. But, yes, it was also in Spider-Noir having the Scorpion in a jar. So, yes, that is kind of an interesting. Also, the Chameleon, which would have been quite good. The Kraven. And that was also the other possibility for the villain in this movie was that it was going to be the Chameleon who was taking on people's personas.

[01:06:56] That's why we had so many villains potentially going to be in the movie. But they went for Jean Grey. And speaking of which, we do need to speak about the other major character introduced here. So, let's get on to our brand new point four. Yes, our brand new point four is Jean Marley Grey. As I want to call her. Fan. What an introduction. And what a pun, by the way. But what an introduction.

[01:07:24] This, for me, is how I want my X-Men introduced. Agreed. Up until 2028 or 2029 when they do the proper X-Men film. Like this slow, proper introduction of your characters that we have seen before. Because we've seen Jean Grey. We've seen Cyclops. We've seen Beast. We've seen all the other takes on these characters. Yeah, yeah.

[01:07:53] This slow Avengers introduction getting us up to our Avengers film or Avengers style film later makes sense. Yeah. Because you're giving this and these characters time to breathe. Mm-hmm.

[01:08:14] And one very unique take is to take Jean Grey and make her Marley Grey. She is the... And she is, for all essential purposes, the antagonist of this film up until the very end. Well, yeah. Yeah, we... I love it. It's the rug pull, isn't it? Yes. You think throughout the movie she's the antagonist. You think the whole time she's the one getting in Spidey's head.

[01:08:43] She's the one that's up against Spidey. And then the big twist that it's not her at all. She's not trying to be antagonistic. But she's in the mind of Scorpion. That's where we... That's where Peter first really encounters her. Where he's fighting against Scorpion again. The person he'd put in prison at the beginning of the movie. And Matt Gargan saying to him, Oh, you think I'm Scorpion? Is that who you think I am? And then you realize, oh, it's Jean inside his head, you know? Yeah.

[01:09:09] And then she has the kind of death wish for him standing in the way. So she goes and possesses MJ. You know, pretty big moment to have MJ versus Peter Parker. Oh, but just the way it was done as well. Again, it's like... Again, the nod was the right way round, or the right way up, I should say. It's that nod to the mask being lifted and the kiss. And it's such a Spider-Man moment.

[01:09:38] From the Tobey Maguire days. As I say, upside down. But it's so iconic. It's so meaningful from the comics, from the movies. And... I had happy tears when I was watching that. I was like, oh. Yeah, no, exactly. Of course MJ would remember him. She said that to him. Tell me you love me and I'll remember who you are. That's what she said to him in the last movie. And I went, oh, if they're doing that. It's a fantasy world. Of course that could happen. And it's the rug pull. And this is what... I totally agree with Chris.

[01:10:07] This is how I want my X-Men to be introduced. I certainly don't want them going anywhere near a school for the moment. Oh, well. No, I know they will. I know they will. No, I mean literally at the end of the movie. One of them is going towards a school. I agree. I agree. Because it had that whole... Westchester. It had the whole Vermont thing with all the trees. No, I get that's going to be there. But for me, it wasn't just the rug pull of like, well, who is this person?

[01:10:36] All of a sudden it's like, oh, it's Jean Grey. It's the rug pull on the smaller intimate moments like that with Spider-Man, with Peter Parker. Those challenges to him. I mean, she is the antagonist, but it's through misunderstanding. And the other side of it is for me personally. Here you have Jean Grey starting out as the bad guy. Not the phoenix or anything like that, but is the person who's questionable with her morals.

[01:11:06] She's inhabiting other people. She's using them for her own purposes. Yes, to try and get some justice for her sister, but realizes through eventually being allowed in by the consent of Peter Parker into his mind. Because he's the only one she's not been able to get inside his head. And here we have her essentially becoming Jean. And I like that.

[01:11:34] Realizing maybe she went about it the wrong way. However despicable Damage Control has been and director Metzger, all this. And I kind of like that because, yeah, I just like that because it's a bit like the Fantastic Four with me with X-Men. I'm kind of like seen it, done it, and I'm glad they're doing it differently.

[01:12:02] They have to, I think. They really have to. They do. And this is a really fantastic start for introducing Jean Grey, who of those shows, I wouldn't necessarily have been like, oh, yeah, Jean Grey. Yay. They relegate her to, well, that's Cyclops' girlfriend and Wolverine likes her and then she becomes the phoenix. And that's always been her story. And that's kind of it. That's all they've ever. Oh, sorry.

[01:12:29] Occasionally, she's the mother of a future mutant that will take over the world or will stop the end of the world. That's kind of it. It's either mother, wife or ender of world. And Sadie Sink plays her really well as well. Sadie Sink is brilliant too. She's really, really good. I also love that poor Sadie Sink for the entirety of the last six months has been asked over and over again, who are you playing, who are you playing, who are you playing? And she's like, I can't tell you, basically. So she hasn't been able to say that she's been playing Jean Grey.

[01:12:55] And what I love about that now after seeing the movie is that she wasn't. Sadie Sink, of course, was playing Jean Grey. But the character of Jean Grey was in the body of 50 people in the movie. So actually, 50 people could have said, we're all playing Jean Grey, basically. Which I love the little metal twist on that. We are Jean Grey. We are Jean Grey. We are Jean Grey. Yes. Which is kind of cool.

[01:13:15] I also do like as well that they are foreshadowing her rage element by, you know, we have the whole thing of, well, Sarah can only jump 30, 33 foot. So, you know, let's stay 35 foot away from her. And her superpower is suddenly pretty lame. What we do see here is... Keep her at the end of a pole, we'll be fine.

[01:13:37] No, but the rage element for her as well were, okay, at this stage, though, that means it goes to this kilometer square across New York. It pulls in Ned and MJ. You know, you see, you know, there's a real threat here from Jean Grey. And it's coming from something hugely emotional in this damage control facility.

[01:14:01] So, for me, this like blew away all the other previous like Dark Phoenix storylines that had happened. Because I just had no feeling towards Jean Grey here. I did here. So, as Chris coming back to that, that's how I want them introduced. Right. And they nailed it. To me, my X-Men, very slowly, one movie at a time. Nailed it. Yeah, exactly. So, the interesting, there's a few things really kind of pulling in here.

[01:14:30] One, you're right. Sadie Stink is, since has, and rightly so, has signed herself up to become a new lead, a new star within the MCU. She's young. She's much like Cynthia. She will slowly take over the world in her acting chops. She must be so happy that her character spent most of the time in a coma. So, she didn't have to do much acting in Stranger Things the last two seasons. She didn't go off and do things like this, you know?

[01:15:01] They are foreshadowing that mutants are there now, are around. But also, they are foreshadowing that under extreme environmental pressure, secondary mutations can happen. And so, they are saying that, like, due to, I think it's going to be because of the way. Well, their version of climate change, which is.

[01:15:28] I think you're thinking of Captain Planet John, not the X-Men. I know. To me, my heart. That kid always had the worst power. Earth. Fire. Wind. Water. Heart. Even the monkey was like. I don't know. Anyway. They're foreshadowing that there is this secondary mutation. It is.

[01:15:55] And the mutations have come about, I think they're going to say, is because of the snaps. So, gamma radiation and radiations come around throughout the universe because of that has triggered the snaps. Click clicks. And that is going to be, so you are essentially saying that Banner and Tony Stark, with their finger clicking, has essentially started this.

[01:16:22] They are the progressors of the new mutation. He just wants to say finger clicking good. Yeah. Chris. Sorry. Because it is. That's a really interesting one. Yeah. The returned people after the snaps, some of them could potentially have mutations because they disappeared for five years. Presumably, everybody that was on a plane gets flight powers. That's how they were able to survive. That's it. Like the X-Files. Like stuff like that. Yeah. I really love that theory.

[01:16:50] I think that's a really, really interesting theory. What are the other massive things that happens? We don't want to skip over this moment with Jean Grey controlling characters in this movie. We had Scorpion. We had MJ, which is the broken heart of the movie where she basically tells Tom Holland he'll never get MJ back because she's seen inside MJ's mind and there's literally nothing of Peter Parker in there. And then we have her going after damage control by getting into the head of the Hulk.

[01:17:21] And we have the team up of Peter and Frank versus the Hulk. Yeah, that was great. Because of MJ. Even though MJ may never fall in love with Peter Parker, she does want to save Spider-Man and does send Frank in to help him out in damage control. It's cool. John Bernthal doing his most John Bernthal, what we have discussed in all the Punisher.

[01:17:51] Him doing that while firing high caliber weapon into the Hulk's face is just iconic. Like it is just like he is not. He is a fly swatting and like buzzing around a Hulk. Absolutely. There's two amazing moments. There's the one where the Hulk is running at Spider-Man.

[01:18:16] Again, very reminiscent of the Hulk versus Black Widow back in the first Avengers. But where Spidey flips over him, grabs Punisher with a web, pulling him underneath the Hulk. It looks like the best comic book cover. And then later on when the two of them are talking and Frank is using his usual mentality. Well, you've got to kill Jean Grey because she's the biggest bad. You've got to shoot her in the head. And Spidey goes, do you just want to get out of fighting the Hulk?

[01:18:45] And Frank goes, yes, I do. Yes, I do. That's exactly what I meant. Great moments. Yeah. So, and again, you can do that in a Punisher film. You could do that in a rated R, right? But I think partially because they had to distill this character into the films. They had to distill this into a Spider-Man film, which is a bit more accessible for everyone. Yeah. I think that version of the Punisher is way more accessible.

[01:19:12] I think it's because he's giving, like, we saw touches of that with the Debra on Wall back and forth. And some of his interactions with Matt in Charlie Cox in Daredevil. The point I was actually making to John earlier on about this, Chris, was for five seasons, the three Daredevil seasons, these two, the two seasons of Bored Again, the seasons of Punisher. You know, the argument from Punisher has always been shoot them in the head.

[01:19:42] That's what he does. And we talked about it over and over and over again. Is Frank right? Shoot them in the head. Is that the way to take out your villains? That's not Matt Murdock's way. And here it is again, presented exactly the same way. He's the same character as he's always been. He just doesn't have to swear all the time and doesn't have to cut people's heads off and doesn't have to use the weapon that kills people all the time. You can do both, is the point. He doesn't always have to be an R-rated character because he was for seven issues of a comic book. He doesn't have to be. He was a Reign for 50 years.

[01:20:12] He has got issues where he was in comic books with characters like Howard the Duck. He's been in comic books with Marvel characters. He doesn't have to go around killing everybody where he goes. Well, I would quite like homicidal maniac Frank Castle with Howard the Duck. With Howard the Duck, yeah. That would be great. I would actually watch that. Plucked and hung up for a while and then chucked into the fry. I think it might be in either zombies or Punisher kills the Marvel Universe, if my memory serves.

[01:20:40] So maybe he does kill Howard the Duck. I think also as well, he's firing a gun at the Hulk. It doesn't matter. Exactly. It's the Hulk. Yeah. You know, it just bounces off. I mean, even the bombs that he uses, rather than it being grenades, it looks kind of like some kind of Shitauri type tech or whatever. No, it's Peter's tech. It's Peter's exploding webs. So that's what he took, what Tom Holland took from the video game.

[01:21:07] It's the web exploders that he has. That he puts around the vault. No, that's the other one. Yeah, exactly. That's what I meant. That's why I meant those. Even those ones that actually have got a bit of oomph to them. That one's the Hulk. Yeah, exactly. I mean, he can fire at will and it doesn't matter because it's the Hulk. So it's great for the punishment. To put the two of them up against each other absolutely makes total sense. But we do get another moment with the Hulk here.

[01:21:36] As you mentioned earlier on, Chris, we have Professor Banner who is now excised of the Hulk. He knows he's in there, but he's keeping him trapped. And he talks to Peter, if you ever see me without this thing on my wrist, run. And, of course, that's the first thing that Peter sees when he walks in. He sees the smashed version of it. So he knows he can't do anything to get Banner back. But we see Banner Hulk.

[01:21:59] We see that version of the Hulk, which is still part Bruce Banner, which is controlled by Jean Grey in the initial part of the fight. And then something happens. There's a break to his mind. And you see the struggle on Jean Grey's face when she's trying to keep control of him. The fight's going on. And something happens. The barrier breaks down. And we have the excellent moment of Hulk saying, no Banner, no girl, only Hulk.

[01:22:29] And he is absolutely gigantic. We haven't seen this Hulk, certainly, since the first Avenger. And even then, Banner had some kind of control over him because he said, I'm always angry back then. So I'm trying to think when was the next time? Maybe Age of Ultron when Hulk was kind of broken and he went after Iron Man? Was that the last time we really saw this version of the Hulk before he flies off into space? No.

[01:22:56] Literally, this was Ed Norton. Yeah. Like for the sizing of it, it was Ed Norton's. Because that is within the MCU. It's that sized. I was trying to think when he was on Planet Hulk or that version in Thor Ragnarok. There was no Banner there. Banner didn't know what was going on during that whole time. So maybe a little bit of that. Maybe. Fair. That's fair. We haven't seen his size and this version of him. Yeah.

[01:23:25] They roided him out. He was big. And Peter Parker, like Tom Holland says, I didn't know you got that big. Because again, it's been a while since we've seen this Hulk. Yeah. And it is spectacular. So cool. It is amazing. It is sensation. And we see that amazing moment with the Hulk's fist surrounding Spidey's head as he starts to crush him.

[01:23:55] That in itself shows you the size of the Hulk there. Yeah, that was excellent. Really, really good moment. And yeah, interestingly, Parker gets through to him here. He says to him, Bruce, it's me. It's your friend, Peter. And Hulk steps back away from him. This is how, to your point, Chris, this is how Ed Norton's Hulk was defeated or was calmed down back in that first movie.

[01:24:19] Someone he loved was able to get through the monster and he backs away. So Hulk backs away and falls out of the building because he's webbed up to about 9 million tons worth of building debris. And we see Banner returned and taken off to hospital. He has no memory of what's happened because Gene was in his mind and then the Hulk came around. He thinks he's done really bad things.

[01:24:46] And I don't know whether you noticed it in the end, in the final news reports at the end of the movie. There is a mention that Bruce Banner has become Hulk and is now gone. He has been taken away. We're not going to see Bruce Banner Hulk for a very long time. He is in prison. So unless there's a big breakout moment, we're not going to see him chatting away to the Avengers in the future. This Banner's gone for a while. They don't say he's in prison. They say he's been institutionalized.

[01:25:17] Institutionalized. Yeah. Which is a really interesting choice. So it will be. Yeah. I'm very curious to see how they bring this all together. I think he is. I think he's on the raft. I think that's where they're putting him. They put a lot of the characters, they put Harrison Ford. Absolutely. Two hooks on the raft. Yeah. Exactly.

[01:25:43] So I think what we'll end up getting is the raft itself will actually play a part in Doomsday and Secret Wars. If you have read the comic books, you will remember there was a thing called the raft as well. Different thing. So I think that thing will be that thing. Interesting. But yeah. But yes, just to say it because you guys are talking about the inhibitor that Peter created.

[01:26:12] He created a universal one, tried to use it on the back of the Hulk. But of course, it's Hulk skin. It's impenetrable. But he does use it on Jean Grey and stops her powers just as she's controlling Frank Castle to use his gun wielding skills to take out the head of damage control and get this thing that she's been looking for. This VMAX that she's been talking about and trying to find. And she uses Frank Castle.

[01:26:38] Really cool touch with John Bernthal channeling Sadie Sink when he's been taken over. I love that. He just does a little moment of good luck with that as Spidey is about to fight the Hulk himself. I thought that was quite fun. But yeah. He takes out her powers by using this little inhibitor. Yeah. Which will, as we talked to death, but this is going to be huge throughout the next bit because it is used very moments later by damage control.

[01:27:08] But one quick piece I just kind of want to quickly just kind of end on is that the VMAX MacGuffin. In that, like, I don't know about you guys, but for this whole point all the way up here, what was VMAX? I was so curious. And being a Marvel nerd, I am running through everything. I am like, is it a Weapon X? Is it VMAX?

[01:27:37] Is it Weapon 5? Maximum version of Weapon 5? And I'm like, who's Weapon 5? I was like, and the Weapon X program, I was running through it all. And we'll talk what is VMAX in a bit. But up to this point, I'm like looking around this vault because we had been led to believe that potentially whatever was VMAX was in that vault. Yeah.

[01:28:01] Because when Spider-Man had gone and met with Massacre, he was like, oh, it's not like you've got it in there. Yeah. So I'm like eyeing up everything going, what was VMAX? Who was VMAX? And not understanding that even at that point, I was like, oh. But yeah, I had at this point thought VMAX was a formula. It was another Super Soldier formula. I thought it was a Weapon X. I was the same. I was the same as you because I was like thinking, what is this?

[01:28:30] Because it just felt so juicy. Like, okay, what is it? And just because you've got things like Doomsday, you know, all this stuff going on. And you're like, what is this really important thing? We do not give enough credit to Marvel writers. I have to stress this. It must be so difficult to write these stories because if anything leaks out from the set, suddenly there's a video on YouTube about it. I'm speculating what it's going to be.

[01:28:58] If this word VMAX leaks out, it means nothing. So that's fine. That doesn't ruin the movie. But I guarantee there was about 20 different videos ready to go about what VMAX was. There's loads of people sitting in that auditorium on the first night going, oh, when I get up tomorrow morning, I'm going to be filming my video about what VMAX is and what the history of it is in Marvel Comics. I just need to get home after this movie and I'm ready to go with my content for tomorrow. There's nothing there for them to talk about.

[01:29:23] But it's a great trick that they've pulled here to make all of us think it's going to be something massive. Is this the Marvel's version of the mutant gene? Is it VMAX in this universe? Is that what she's calling it? Something like that. It is a compound V for all of our boys listeners. That's where my brain is. I did kind of have a... Okay. No, I did. I'm not going to lie about it. Right. But I think that's...

[01:29:53] What's your... But that's... You either go two ways, I think, with that. And they went that way. And I'm like, okay, I get it. It's fine. But I was kind of just... Okay. Yeah. So let's actually get... Let's get into it. Should we get into the discussion? Our final point of the finale and it all? Absolutely. Yes. Our final brand new point. Brand new point five. Are you Peter Parker or are you Spider-Man? I'm both. Yes.

[01:30:23] So we find out that, yes, it turns out the villain for the entire movie has been damage control. We probably should have suspected when the hand were working for them as security in the opening scene. Yeah. I just realized that they're just young people that need some direction. Okay. From a super villain like you, maybe. Although in the comic books, Daredevil does become the leader of the hand. So yes. Okay. Maybe. While he is also evil-ish. While he's kind of evil-ish. Exactly. But yes.

[01:30:51] We should have suspected that the reason why we haven't got the actor who's been playing the head of the DODC in movies and TV shows for the last couple of years, including Spider-Man, why he wasn't here is because the main villain is going to be Department of Damage Control. Right? We should have guessed that. Should have. Should have, could have. But like, I do like this.

[01:31:12] This makes and sets up damage control as the big bad government kind of agency going for it. It is. But are they? Or are they just, have they just been destroyed by the end of this movie? I just think their human resources is bad because they've clearly hired the wrong people. But I mean, I think they kind of are and they aren't. I mean, I think that's where they can sort of play.

[01:31:41] They, they're kind of just the gray, yeah, government organization. And it's the individuals. I think that was the thing with the VMAX thing, because you had the director saying, I don't know anything about it. And I was like, oh my goodness, this means it's even bigger than the director of damage control. This like goes all the way to the White House or maybe even there's a little bit of shield or shield in space.

[01:32:09] And it's going to suddenly come back or whatever, you know? So. But, you know, again, I just love that in retrospect, when you're looking back at Agent Cleary, who's the other Department of Damage Control character that we saw back to No Way Home, back to Wonder Man and back to Ms. Marvel. His intent has always been to find people with powers and maybe bring them in or maybe do something to them.

[01:32:35] And now that's gone to the nth extreme, Spider-Man captures the villains and then they turn them to the side of the Department of Damage Control, use their weaponry as their ability. So, again, similar to Nick Fury's speech back in Avengers, you know, they wanted to create something to stop the gods from invading Earth. Department of Damage Control are filling that void here under Metzger.

[01:32:57] He's looking for something to use powered individuals on the behalf of people that don't have any powers, I guess. Right. So that's really interesting. But he had in the past experimented on Sarah Gray, Jean Gray's sister, who in this world has a very similar power to Jean Gray. I don't think that's the case in the comics. I think she's also a... She's a character.

[01:33:23] I think the first appearance I was reading it the other day, the first appearance of her, she's just at home when Jean discovers that she has powers, basically. Yeah. And they've retconned and made some different changes. But, of course, that happens when characters are 60 years old. Exactly. Oh, yeah. She has a hidden sister who's also powered. Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah, exactly. What a great way to do it.

[01:33:44] But I did enjoy Sarah Gray, and I did enjoy this flip on that they have been experimenting on mutants to force them to take a figure out, to understand their powers so that they may use them in the right way. Or give it to agents. Give it to the person that they want to give it to. Yeah, it's a really interesting one, isn't it? Definitely.

[01:34:11] Again, putting us into Weapon X, kind of Wolverine-level stuff, putting us into Super Soldier, putting us into, in the comic books when Norman Osborn ran S.H.I.E.L.D. And basically built his own Dark Avengers and his own Dark Shield and used technology, the good technology for bad. Yes. Or what they thought was good post-Civil War. This is interesting to me, again, setting up Mesker.

[01:34:41] Mesker is a bad character or a... Great character. ...miss... Great character, bad guy. Exactly. And then that got us to VMAX. Mm-hmm. I liked this. I liked that VMAX was nothing. I liked that it turns out it was the last thing she saw, Sarah saw, before she died, and it was Ventilation Max. Yes.

[01:35:07] The air vent above her as she died, and she sent out those words to Jean, and they registered it on her final communication. Yes. It's really important. It's not nothing. It's the moment that her sister's powers also jumped to a higher level than they had been at before. They could only jump 33 feet. Just before she died, her power exploded out and landed with Jean.

[01:35:35] So it's almost like, at that moment, it's not just the rage that inspires Jean's powers. It's also she realizes, hang on a second, my sister was able to break through that barrier that she's always had. I can do that too. So it's a little bit of a mix of both things. It's not just that she gets really angry and can jump her powers. It's also she has a little nod there. Oh, hang on a second. My sister, in her final moments, pushed past those limits. I can do that. I think. I think. Oh, that could be it.

[01:36:03] I took it as more just that it is that we have seen secondary mutations across films, across bits. I took it as we had seen as they were pushing Jean. Jean was already in showing that secondary piece because they go, something's changing. And they think it wasn't just purple flashes, pink flashes too on the screen. I liked it because it wasn't those things.

[01:36:32] The VMAX. Yes, it was something, but it wasn't what we had all been expecting. I think that's a sign of some of these good writers that Marvel and, in this case, Sony have brought into the MCU. In that, they're showing us something we haven't seen, which is it wasn't something that we could all pour over the lore within 70 years of things. It was something net new.

[01:37:02] And I like net new. I like a story I haven't seen. I am using, sorry, net new as a business terrible. Sorry, what's net new here? The VMAX is like nothing. It's not. It's not something. I don't think it's net new because it's a trope. It's literally a trope. You think so? So for me, I sighed because it just felt like they were boxed in that they had to do something like that.

[01:37:31] I mean, unless Sarah was contained just in that box of the artificial room. So she only thought she was in the room. Fine. But I don't know. I loved this final third of this movie. And I think it absolutely elevated the entire movie. I thought it was brilliant. But I do think that the VMAX, it's just they didn't have to go down that route at all. None of that was necessary.

[01:38:01] It was just how they chose to do it. And I do think sometimes it's a little tropey where it's like, oh, that symbol because it was the pattern on the wallpaper or something like that. And I get it. That's the trope. And I just was like, oh, okay. It's a way to deal with it.

[01:38:24] It's a way to set her up on the path to getting there without it being something like she needs to find Hulk who's in this particular location. So I do like that they go that path. I don't want to make more of it than ultimately I was like, okay, they've done that. Right. And I was like, okay. And I think it sets up a very different ending for this now because we started at the movie thinking that the bad guy was Jean Grey effectively.

[01:38:52] When we learned who it was, she was the antagonist of the movie. By the end of the movie, it turns out she's being experimented on. And how do you end that storyline then? How do you end the storyline where you started it with somebody that's trying to discover what happened to her sister? You learn that the sister has been experimented on until she was dead. And this character was going to be used in the same way by Mesker. So you need to deal with that.

[01:39:18] And the way they deal with it is by her using her powers against Mesker. And then it being a battle in the minds almost of Peter Parker and her. Oh, absolutely. So I love that they brought this back. And this, I'm going to use the word trope. Yourself and Chris use trope all the time. They're just storytelling methods. This is the trope. This is what you do with Jean Grey character. It has to be a battle in the mind to shut down her decisions to go morally gray, to go evil.

[01:39:48] It has to be. It always is. It's always Professor X gets into her mind and calms her down. Or somebody gets into her mind and calms her down. Here having Peter use everything he learned from his beloved Aunt May to calm her down by allowing his Aunt May version in his mind to say what she said to Peter to calm him down in the past. And I think that's a great use of both of these characters and a bit of a trope. Absolutely. No, that's not the trope I was talking about.

[01:40:17] I loved that. I absolutely loved the resolution of using Aunt May's words to Peter repeated verbatim to Jean Grey, who is beside herself because she's realized what her sister went through, what predicament she is in. And she believes everyone is against her. She is on her own.

[01:40:45] And it is that notion of what Aunt May says is that when you think you're alone, you're not. And that's how Peter gains her trust. He lets her in. She's not been able to do it since then. So you have that whole notion of I will let you in. You can read my mind and you can see that we were exactly the same and that you can trust me because I've had exactly the same feelings as you around being alone, being frightened, being afraid. What's going on?

[01:41:14] And it was my Aunt May and I've lost her now like you've lost your sister. So that's to me where this coalesces around. I think... I'm not talking about that as a trope. I just meant the VMAX thing. I know you're not. And I think it is fantastically done. And to me, it just absolutely elevates this movie in terms of how that is portrayed. Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Absolutely.

[01:41:43] And they snuck in the whole underlying message of X-Men being about homosexuality. You know, the story here about the two sisters thrown out by their mother because of the type of people that they are, which is what Sarah says to Jean. And the words here from Aunt May going, the people who love you love you for who you are, not for what you do. Yeah. Great that they're able to sneak that in underneath as well. So, yeah. Great job. And once again, give us a different version of what great power comes great responsibility.

[01:42:12] And this is that you have with that responsibility also comes the power to choose what to do next. Yes. With you'll have increased power. Where you have the responsibility to do the right thing. Yeah. Even in the face of adversity and even for people who don't deserve it. And he's telling Jean Grey to do the same. It's like, I'm allowing you to use your power in my mind. So, use it responsibly. To become the phoenix. Absolutely.

[01:42:42] So, I loved how that resolved. I do really want to quickly also just talk and shift very quickly into Spider-Man and Peter Parker and the duality and the choice he makes of, who are you? Are you Peter Parker? Are you Spider-Man? Yeah. I am both. Oh. Yeah. Like, that fight scene? Spectacular. With the hands, yeah. Like, just when you're seeing him fight. Sorry, but with the Jean Grey controlled hands. Controlling hands, yeah.

[01:43:10] It's really cool what they accomplish here. It must have been so interesting for the choreographers to set that up on set. Cool was it having, you know, five characters moving like one. It's incredible. Running on the back of the other to get up to Spider-Man as he is, like, spidering on the wall. And I enjoyed this upgrade. They did upgrade Spider-Man here.

[01:43:37] Like, they've increased his agility, his spider sense, his web shooters, him becoming and accepting this additional piece. Just seeing him move. I know they, I've seen some people go, yeah, they just basically did a Matrix Neo moment. And I'm like, well, yeah. It works. They did. There's a reason it works. Like, him looking slow-mo bullet time. It just was.

[01:44:06] And I've used spectacular. I've used sensational. I've used amazing. I've used all the idioms that you connect to Spider-Man. It was. That's why I go to Spider-Man films. That moment where you see Peter Parker, against all odds, rise up. You see in the very first homecoming where he is trapped under the rubble and the water is pouring and he cries and he pushes himself. This is that same moment.

[01:44:35] This is the overcoming adversity. And against all odds, you are able to mentally overcome and physically overcome. Yeah. And this, getting from that moment up into that Gene Gray Professor X moment where you talked about where he has to then kind of stop Gene from going that step too far. He has to be the bigger brother. He has to be the father figure.

[01:45:02] You know, again, this version of Peter Parker came into the universe with the father figure of Iron Man, the father figure of Tony Stark. And he's lost everything now and now he's grown. And it's finally a story of Spider-Man, as we said earlier on, rather than Spider-Boy. You know, he is now in the world and taking someone in and saying, I'm here for you. You know, that's a great growth of the character after all these years. And I think that's what they'll do.

[01:45:32] I think they are making him Spider-Man. This is his next trilogy. He will do two more solo films, introduce Miles at the end, and then that mantle is passed. And he is that then Iron Man figure for the next generation. Not if the Punisher has anything to do with it, because Frank tried to take him out and shoot him. No, he didn't. He tried to shoot Gene Gray from about 100 yards away. No, about 100 meters. He is a sniper.

[01:46:00] It was way more, but it was good. High caliber rifle. It's actually, sorry, it has to be a kilometer, doesn't it? Because she has taken over a kilometer of the city. He's outside the dome and he's shooting through the dome into Gene Gray. And Spider-Dee's brand new hypersenses mean he's able to maneuver her out of the way and takes the bullet himself. Yeah. Yeah. And nice. Fantastic. We see. Absolutely.

[01:46:26] We also see this Sadie Sink, why she got paid and why she is the actress she is. This moment where she is in with Aunt May and then directly after kind of calling to Peter, helping Peter. I think this is really well done. Yeah.

[01:46:43] And then we get a moment which I never thought I wanted to see more, which was John Bernthal, Tom Holland as Frank Castle and Peter Parker in a hospital bed and the Punisher welling up. Did he though? No, he did. He did. He did. It was so good.

[01:47:07] And it was just that moment of like just really seeing that I was like, yeah, that's that back and forth. That's really well done. And probably why I think this one of the writing style of this film is potentially my most preferred, which is it relies on a lot of one or two piece, maximum three kind of back and forth narratives discussions.

[01:47:36] Because you have like, be it like the Peter Parker and Bruce Banner, be it MJ and Ned, be it Peter and Ned, be it Peter and Gene. Like it's all one on ones, very much one on one, one on twos. It's a very talky movie in comparison to some of the other Spidey movies, you know. This is one of those moments and it's made so much money now. So they obviously made the right choice anyway. But it's one of those moments that you go, was, say, Burger King right to go?

[01:48:06] We'll hand out Spidey mugs to eight year olds who are buying their happy meals, whatever. I know I've mixed up loads of stuff there, so I'm not going to get sued by anybody. But effectively, were they right to say this is the thing for eight year olds? Because I know the eight, ten year olds that were in my audience were groaning halfway through this movie. They were bored completely by this, at least the first hour of this movie before the action kicked in. This is a very talky movie. It's a more grown up version of Spider-Man than we've seen.

[01:48:35] And it's one of those, as I say, one of those moments where you go, should they be here? It's like when, it's like when Batman Begins was, had stuff going on in McDonald's. You go, did kids really want to go and see Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy? Probably not. But comic book can also deliver great stories. And I think this is what this does. But I also, I think it might be different things. But I mean, I think kids can handle a lot more.

[01:49:01] I mean, as I say, Jurassic Park back in the day when I went to see that as a relatively late teen, there were loads of young people in there who were then crying and petrified on the opening scene. Like it wasn't for, you could argue, it wasn't for them. I think. But then they turned into. I think. I think they can take loads of it.

[01:49:26] I mean, whether it's with the scorpion, whether it's that initial action sequence around the tank, there's loads of stuff and they can tune in and tune out. They won't necessarily get the whole X-Men and the idea of binary choices or whatever. Or, you know, the ability to be more than one thing. Although just a quick story about that. When we were self and John went to see it the second time, there was a kid behind us who must have been about six years old. His first time seeing the movie as well was with his mom.

[01:49:56] But when the old woman is in the tank and the tank is opened, when the old woman's in there, the six year old behind us went, that's Jean Grey pretending to be somebody else because he's obviously read it on the internet or seen it on YouTube videos. So I was like, God, I hope John didn't hear that because that spoils the whole reveal later on in the movie. But anyway. Do, do, do. But anyway, we do get a great Spider-Man moment where Peter Parker.

[01:50:24] John turned around and smacked a kid in the cinema. Luckily, I didn't hear him. So I was like blissfully unaware of this tragedy. But we do get a great Spider-Man moment when Peter Parker goes outside to see the whole city is rallying behind him. He gets to see the adulation that his heroing has done. So he again feels like he's not alone in the city full of millions of people who are there to rally around him and help him out.

[01:50:49] And we get a great Frank Castle moment who is pretending to be Peter Parker with Spider-Man, with Spider-Man masks on. And as we cut inside, we hear the now trademark John Bernthal. And he's pretending to be Spider-Man. Which is great fun. I thought that was fun. And then look, to wrap this all up, MJ and Peter and Ned share a moment before the finale.

[01:51:16] So we do get this lovely image and drawing of Peter with his mask off and Ned building Legos. That is drawn by MJ. Quick Easter egg. That was actually drawn by Tom Holland's brother. Oh, very good. As a nice piece. That was fun, fun Easter egg there. So then there is the kind of final, final, final pieces where we are.

[01:51:42] There is Ned and Peter and where we leave off with the rest of the characters. So let's try and jump in and kind of close that off. So Punisher is out punishing again. He leaves the hospital. Peter is out being, taking his time to recuperate and letting DeWolf and the cops handle what they can handle. Yeah, absolutely. And he does know the names of DeWolf's kids.

[01:52:12] Yeah. Which is a nice, fun piece. Absolutely. I like that as well. Like he said at the start, he's just a volunteer. The police take care of all the actual police work. He just helps out when he needs to help out. Like when a tank is going through the city, he's very strong. So he can stop that. Yeah. You don't need to bring the army down to do that. Spider-Man can do that. That's cool. But yeah, I love that he takes a bit of time out. MJ asks him to come in to spend some time with Ned. And then she says to him, you know, you guys do look like best friends, you know, which is really good.

[01:52:42] You know, even though in her moment beforehand, she has seen the note that Peter was going to deliver to her. And she says, I don't have any memories of you. I know all these things may have happened. I can see why this girl loved you, but I don't love you because I don't know you at all. Yeah. Which is an interesting moment. But in the final kind of montage, we do see that MJ is back on the roof of the school.

[01:53:06] And she's playing with the necklace that Peter Parker gave her when they were younger. And we see the excellent final moment with Peter meeting Ned in the bodega. And Peter decides to introduce himself properly to Ned as Peter. And they do their famous handshake, which they used to be able to do without even looking at each other. And now Ned is instantly able to do it and then says Peter.

[01:53:36] So why is this and what's happened here? Love the speculation about this. There's one that Ned potentially because he had some magic powers back at the end of the last Spider-Man movie. He was on his way to Cameratash. At least he thought he had the magic powers that potentially he had a little breakthrough in Doctor Strange's spell. Maybe that's one of the reasons why.

[01:54:00] But the other one is that because they were inside that one kilometer of control from Jean Grey, that she, like she did with Hulk, broke down a little barrier inside their brains. So they now recognize Peter slightly. It's starting to come back to them that she broke that barrier. So maybe everybody inside that one kilometer range would know who Peter Parker is if they knew him beforehand. But these two did know him beforehand. So that's why they're able to maybe see through that.

[01:54:29] That's why MJ is going back to the roof of the school where they spent so much time together. That's why she is looking at that ring that's around her neck. Maybe she does have some memories. Again, things to probably play out in the future movies. Oh, why she was crying when they are being held in that force field. Why you have a single tear because there are memories coming back. I do like that theory. I personally think that's a fun kind of way to bring it back,

[01:54:59] but recognize everything that's been done and everything that's been there for the whole period. And not just literally do a spell to bring it all back, if you know what I mean. Exactly. And again, the fact that they've literally referenced that she can't just be kissed and then remember everything about Peter. So I love that there's some little explanations that are in there, some little seeds that they've sown. And again, these are the same writers that wrote the last three movies.

[01:55:28] So they've probably set up a few things, hoping that they'll get another movie to expand upon them. So yeah, I like it a lot. Yeah. No, it's absolutely fantastic. Should we quickly talk about the post-credit? Yes, absolutely. So the post-credit. Interesting. I was expecting more. I was expecting an end and a post. Right. Everybody wanted something to lead into Doomsday, right? That was kind of the thing. I don't even know if I wanted that.

[01:55:54] I wanted more just Spider-Man. I always think that that's what I wanted. So I was hoping for another scene with Tombstone. I was hoping for something like with the rhino or something silly, like the black tarantula. Like just another comic book still or two of him just kind of doing covers.

[01:56:20] But no, we get the Spidey Tracker and it is trying to find Spider-Man and it's Spider-Man not found. And then it finds Spider-Man. It zooms out and out and out and out and it is in space. Uh-huh. Very much a Doomsday reference. Actually, probably closer. It is Secret Wars. Yes. And Battleworld reference.

[01:56:48] But we'll have to wait and see for absolute confirmation because he could be not in. He may be on a spacecraft in Doomsday with the Fantastic Four or one of those guys. And that's why he's in space. But I think it's more likely Battleworld than Secret Wars. Yeah, I think the way the tracking app indicates that Spider-Man is no longer in New York, can't be found in the US, isn't on Earth. And then he does reappear in space.

[01:57:17] I think that's that is for Secret Wars. I think he's just disappeared. He's been plucked from Earth and ended off in some region of space, which is exactly what happened in the original Secret Wars. Probably the biggest comic book for Spider-Man back then in the 80s. He was the biggest character. He ended off with his black suit from Secret Wars. So it's massive for the character of Spider-Man to be in that. I don't think Spider-Man is going to be in Doomsday this year. I think they're going to skip over him. He is small potatoes.

[01:57:47] He's dealing with the return of his friends, potentially. He's dealing with the smaller things that are happening. I think we're going to be skipping Spider-Man this year and seeing him again next year in Secret Wars. That's my theory, especially because this was supposed to come out after Doomsday and has swapped places with it. Yeah. I think he may be in it. I think it might just be a small cameo scene. I think that's the closest we will get in that.

[01:58:16] But he will play a big, big part in Secret Wars. Yeah. I'm with you on that. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. A few tiny Easter eggs, tiny little notes before we close out this. Let's do it. That's all right. One that I really am sad about, just because it's us and we're the Defendish TV podcast. That's our Marvel coverage. We've started out covering the Netflix shows. And one of the major characters in those shows was Night Nurse, played by Rosario Dawson.

[01:58:43] And she did have a scene filmed in this movie. The scene was where Peter Parker was being treated in hospital. Nobody's supposed to know the secret identity of Spider-Man. So who do you call? You call the Night Nurse, who will keep his secret identity secret. And she was supposed to be taking care of him in hospital. That is why he's wearing the Metro General Hospital outfit when he's leaving the hospital. I think even in dialogue, it says he's in a different hospital in New York. The news reporters say he's in a different hospital.

[01:59:13] So he's specifically wearing the Metro General outfit because Night Nurse is supposed to be in this scene. So that would have made so much sense, wouldn't it? You start out the movie that nobody knows Peter Parker is Spider-Man. You end off the movie that loads of people in the hospital will have seen Spider-Man without his mask on. They'll probably keep the secret as well. I guess that's what people are gambling on because back in Spider-Man 2, everybody saw Peter Parker with his mask off on the train, right? But New Yorkers keep secrets. So they kept all that secret, right? So there's that too.

[01:59:41] At least probably nobody will tell that Peter Parker is Spider-Man. But I do like that they did have Marzaria Drossen film a scene. And she's very sorry this big cut. Yeah. God. Lots of speculation that the kid outside the hospital who says, who acknowledges Peter and thwips at him from the shoulders of his guardian or parent is potentially Miles Morales. That's the first appearance of Miles Morales. But they've said that since young kids have been in every movie.

[02:00:11] They've said that. But I think in this stage, the joke about Peter Parker being the kid that said hi to Iron Man in the first Iron Man movie and then eventually became Peter Parker. That's why they're saying this. But the other theory that I really liked as well is that that could be Jean Grey saying goodbye to him. She possessed this child, even though she says she doesn't possess children. She jumped into this child just to say goodbye to Peter and then disappeared. Or it could be neither. I hope it's not that one. Okay. Yeah.

[02:00:42] I do like when Jean is going, that nod is that she is going to upper New State, New York, Westchester. So she's going to the X-Mansion. But I do love that Kevin Fahey has already come out to say, yeah, she's on a bus. She could be going to Westchester, but she may just be going to Boston. Let's hope. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[02:01:08] Last one from me then is the woman in the apartment with the blonde hair that Peter's ignoring because he's just in his whole feelings about being Spider-Man. Two possibilities for this. Is it a nod to the neighbor from Spider-Man 2, the one that makes the biscuits and cake for Peter? Ursula, I think she was. Spider-Man 2. Or is it maybe Gwen Stacy? It's Ursula. It's a nod to the... It has to be the neighbor. Because I think Gwen Stacy will come back.

[02:01:35] I think they will do Gwen Stacy and they'll do Felicia, but they will be two bigger stars than that person. There you go. Who is not a big, big star. You never know. Between now and the five years it's going to take for another Spider-Man movie, maybe she'll get a huge role in the future project. There you go. They just knew it was coming. I think that's it. Any other notes? Nothing from me. No, nothing from me. Fantastic.

[02:02:03] Well, Chris, do you defend Spider-Man brand new day? Strangely. Very weirdly, yes. Strange for me. No, look, of course, I've used the word sensational, amazing, spectacular. This actually is now one of my favorite... It is my favorite out of all of the Tom Hollands. Wow. Right. It totally is. And it's up there now with...

[02:02:33] It's definitely up there now in my favorite Spider-Man property films. It very much is the Spider-Man I grew up with in that he is down on his luck. He's out of college or out of school. He is in the apartment. That's like this age group, kind of aged, small potatoes, kind of storyline, grounded storylines. And I think this is some of the best writing.

[02:03:02] I think McKenna and Summers, the two writers, have now found the voice of Spider-Man. Oh, yeah. Found that right. What these should be and how they should sound and what the best way... Because they've had time with this character. I think then Tom Holland knows who this character is. He was apparently heavily involved in the writing of this one as well.

[02:03:32] And I think they found a really good director who knows how to do some of this. And he was right to take over... Sorry, not right. I'm glad he took over from John Watts. I love John Watts ones. But this just... There was an elevation almost here that I think are just slightly different. So, yes, completely defend Spider-Man Brand New Day. Fantastic. John, do you defend Spider-Man Brand New Day? Absolutely.

[02:04:00] I do defend Spider-Man Brand New Day. Yeah, I'd give it four and a half Spidey crop tops out of five. Not my top. I just think it's really good. I mean, I think the final third of this really pays off and brings together the other two. It really does.

[02:04:24] I love the fact that you have the intrigue around who is this person controlling people. I guess some people could have immediately guessed Jean Grey. I didn't. So, for me, this was brilliant. All the way through, who is it? I love the treatment from Dustin Daniel Cressin around how or if Ned and MJ would remember Peter.

[02:04:53] And I loved that whole treatment. I loved how it got circumvented with the notion that MJ has remembered, but it isn't. It was Jean Grey.

[02:05:07] I loved Jean Grey being effectively the problematic, antagonistic person here that was up against Spidey and throwing the Hulk in there at him as well. Absolutely. The Punisher, I thought the treatment of him here was great.

[02:05:32] Dare I say it, better than actually Jon Bernthal's treatment of him just a few months earlier. It was a paycheck. It was, but it doesn't need to because we don't have Wonder Man because of that paycheck. I love the speculation from Punisher fans, apparently the ones that don't like that he's been PGI-ified, is that Don Bernthal wouldn't possibly go in and make this movie until he was allowed to make his version of Punisher was the reason why. No, no, he just wanted a paycheck.

[02:06:00] Marvel willing to give him a paycheck so that he would appear in this. It's fine. So, yeah. So, I mean, for me, this worked really, really well. And I absolutely loved it. So, yeah, really up the, I think, as Chris said, I think, I wouldn't necessarily say I would, I think it is better, but it almost feels slightly a bit like Harry Potter.

[02:06:23] Not quite as bad as that, but you can see the evolution of this franchise under Sony with, you know, at least consulting the mothership with Marvel Studios. Yeah. But I think you see the evolution of that. I think it's important then that you've got this consistency in the writing. Yeah. And this has just made me love Dustin Daniel Crescent even more as a director.

[02:06:53] Tom Holland is great in this. So, yeah, for me, four and a half Spidey crop tops out of five for me. Excellent. Derek, do you defend this movie, Spider-Man Brand New Day? Absolutely. Yep. Totally defend it. Three for three for us. Three for three for Dustin Daniel Cretton. I can't wait to see what he does next. He made one of my favorite Marvel movies beforehand with Shang-Chi. Now he's back with Spider-Man, making one of my favorite Spider-Man movies and made Wonder-Man, which was brilliant.

[02:07:21] I'd love to see how he continued that with Wonder-Man 2. That's not going to happen, but we're going to see Shang-Chi 2, which at least he's got that. And that's going to be really exciting to see. And the best thing, because you guys have talked about everything else in your sum up, but the best thing about this movie making over a billion dollars in just four days is that Sony have confirmed there are no plans to make any more Spider-Verse live-action movies.

[02:07:47] There are no plans to make any sequels to the already terrible Spider-Verse movies, but they will have Spider-Man back. We will have Tom Holland back as Spider-Man in the future. They've realized their mistake in making Morbius and making Madame Web and making the Venom movies, all those terrible, terrible movies. So at least that's one brilliant saving grace. They know there's another billion dollars in another Tom Holland Spider-Man movie in the future. Yes. Well done, Sony, for finally realizing it. After all these years, you can't make comic book movies.

[02:08:17] You're terrible at them. Have Marvel thoughts. Well, they can. They clearly can. I mean, I think I agree with you, but I do think Venom should be equally on par here. They just didn't make the right creative decisions. That's what I mean. I think they're realizing they can't make the right creative decisions without a little bit of help and guidance from Marvel Studios. That's what the big realization has been this week. Hang on a second.

[02:08:41] We've been throwing money at properties that we're not given the correct guidance and we're not given the correct overview of and they're not making money. So we're going to stop production on all of those things. Yes. Great stuff. Thank you so much for joining us for our overall chat about Spider-Man Brand New Day. We do have some feedback in from our wonderful fellow defenders as well. First up, we got a message in from a mathematician over on Facebook. He says, loved it, loved it, loved it. A couple of things I didn't love so much first.

[02:09:09] First, not sure using Aunt May to give the motivational speech to bring Jean back down to earth was the right choice. I would have preferred MJ or even Frank to do it. Second, maybe as I was with the primary school aged kids and would have appreciated it more if I couldn't sense them getting a little bored. But the movie had a fabulous third act and it came to a successful end for Spidey. But it then felt like it had a fourth act, which flashback to show you a bit of an origin for Jean Grey and what happened to her sister.

[02:09:34] The kids started to switch off at that point, thinking it was about to end with the surprisingly wholesome team up of Frank and Peter, seeing off the danger of a 2015 strength level Hulk who returned as a mind control villain. But it still had at least half an hour to go at that point. Less action filled with more backstory. But back to the good stuff from the movie.

[02:10:01] The first two hours were amazing with a really funny cameo from Yelena. The fabulous Zendaya is a highly rated actress, but still underrated in my opinion. Drama, comedy, a lot. She has taken Ned's role as primary sidekick, but that's sad because she is so engaging in the role. Her and Holland have a chemistry that shows how much they get along in their real lives together. I think my nine-year-old has his first crush. The Punisher had to be dumbed down for the film, yes, but they even showed how aware they were by having Spidey web his mouth shut as he was about to curse.

[02:10:31] Brought a big laugh out of the adults in the audience. The fights were epic, particularly the battles versus the hand, but all the action was top notch. I agree with Derek about it being smaller, but also bigger. I watched it in 3D and would recommend it as there's plenty of action scenes that are enhanced by feeling in the middle of it all. Great return for the MCU, waiting too long for this. On to Doomsday in December via first finding out what vision has been up to.

[02:10:55] 4.5 slices of Little Caesars Weberoni pizza out of 5 for me, boss, worthy of any MCU phase. Excellent mathematician. Thank you so much, mathematician. And yes, I am so, the Little Caesars Weberoni pizzas, we don't have it over here in Ireland. But it was a bit of obvious product placement because all the pizzas were with Little Caesars and there was a Spider-Man box for the Weberoni pizza.

[02:11:24] Obviously, because Little Caesars in the MCUs do also sponsor and have Weberoni pizza. Of course. So, interesting. I do love the joke that's been going around, would any actual New Yorker eat Little Caesars pizza? Well. It's one of the best places on earth to eat pizza. Would you eat Little Caesars if you had access to that many amazing pizza restaurants in New York? Absolutely. And I think, mathematician, to maybe partially answer your question about bringing Gene back down to Earth,

[02:11:54] well, I think Frank did try. It was just with a massive sniper rifle rather than talky-talky. Exactly. Which is kind of in Frank's wheelhouse. So, I think he tried, but he was prevented by Spider-Man. Yes. But great stuff. Thanks, mathematician. We also got some feedback from Russell Hooper who said, I just watched it. Very good. And then he took me at it, that Wolverine cameo was unexpected. Well done.

[02:12:24] Yeah. I've seen a lot of people do that. Like, the first 24 hours, the amount of cameos that weren't actual cameos I saw pop up were fun. Yeah. It was fun. Absolutely. But no, the Wolverine cameo you're thinking of, Russell, is on PS5 next month. There you go. And we also have some feedback from Salim Ikisler who said, I may have missed something. What happened to Smart Hulk?

[02:12:52] Why does he need an inhibitor? This, you didn't miss anything. This, I don't think they fully explained it. I think it might be explained that it's in one of the novelizations or something I heard, that essentially he wants to be Bruce Banner again, not Smart Hulk. Yeah. And he's afraid of additional mutations from the gamma rays.

[02:13:18] So he has created this inhibitor gauntlet. So he can just be that professor, Banner type of professor. But I think that's what I've heard. I think he's just jealous of his cousin who can control whether she's She-Hulk or not. And he's like, okay, I guess I'll use science to control that I will not be Hulk. Because it's always been the story of Bruce Banner that he wants to get rid of the Hulk. That's always been there.

[02:13:47] And in the MCU, because he hasn't had a movie and can't have his own movie, that has kind of gone away. He just is the Hulk when he needs to be the Hulk or when they need to use him. But yeah, I think that backstory of him wanting to get rid of the Hulk once and for all, and he's finally found a scientific way to do it, makes a lot of sense in this movie. So yeah, great stuff. Thanks, Salim. Yeah, thanks, Salim. We got an email through from Coffee and Vodka who says, Greetings, fellow inhibited defenders. Welcome home.

[02:14:15] Gave it a day to lose the new movie scent. A lot of good. Pete, MJ, and Ned's situation was handled very well. It made perfect sense for her to Gamora Peter, and the ending re-meet and handshake greet was promisingly sweet. All Spider-Man aspects were perfectly executed from costume to attitude to effects. The addition of Captain DeWolf is a nice Easter egg, and Jean Grey, a foreshadowing gift.

[02:14:42] Banner's role, while necessary for the whole inhibitor subplot, was a bit unsatisfying, but the only really negative aspect of the film was the Punisher. It turns out PG, public-pleasing Punisher, is even less palatable than One Last Kill's self-pitying Punisher. And like Doctor Strange before him, he was only there to shoehorn in plot points. All told, however, a decent summer blockbuster. Three and a half ropey wrist holes,

[02:15:12] dropped Xs, rapidly referenced rogues, and hot neighbour callbacks out of five. Peace and take care. Coffee and vodka. Fantastic coffee and vodka. I do know that our take on the Punisher, at least mine and John's take on the Punisher One Last Kill, is very different to a lot of other people's take on it. So yeah, I think we're probably on opposite sides of whether Bernthal was better here or better in One Last Kill. Yes. Yeah, well, yes, certainly. But I also think coffee and vodka probably...

[02:15:42] Didn't like them there either? No. Probably, yes. Even less. It's just this was even less palatable. Even less palatable, yes. So it's really down there, whereas we felt it nudged up again. Just because it felt real. I just like seeing John Bernthal smile occasionally. That's all. He's a very grumpy actor. He's given lots of grumpy characters, so I like to see him smile again. Great stuff. Thanks, coffee and vodka. Finally, we had an email in from Paolo, who says, Hi, guys. I watched the movie earlier today.

[02:16:11] Thoroughly enjoyed it. Had a lot of fan-pleasing stuff overall, but not as many surprises as I thought. I love the Paraboo storyline, although I wonder if they will pick up the dampener technology further down the line, here or elsewhere. Was this Punisher supposed to be the same as the Netflix one? It felt a lot more like a kid-friendly version, if you know what I mean. The Jean Grey introduction was okay, I guess. I don't know if this origin story matches anything published, though. I haven't read much of the comics in the last 20 years. The last scene made me shed a tear, a great way to end the movie. So the post-credits scene

[02:16:40] refers to Secret Wars, right? Does that mean Spider-Man won't be in Doomsday? Looking forward to hearing your review. Keep up the good work. Paolo. Great stuff. Thanks, Paolo. I think at the moment we're thinking he won't be in Doomsday. And I think given this was, as Derek has said, was after, it feels a bit like that it might be the case. Yeah, the release date at least officially was supposed to be after. But yeah, it's possible.

[02:17:10] Maybe that's how he connected with Yelena and why he goes and visits her is because they have a moment together in Doomsday. Maybe that's it. But yeah, we don't know. He hasn't been announced as part of the Doomsday cast on those 155 chairs, if you remember that announcement for Doomsday. Tom Holland wasn't announced back then. But entirely possible, another 125 chairs will be brought out in Tom Holland will be in. Those ones as it comes up. They might even go back.

[02:17:39] I think the Russos joked at Comic-Con that they won't finish making Doomsday until they pry it out of their cold, dead hands. So they're still making it at the moment, as they say. Don't they want to replace themselves with AI? No, no, that's not exactly what they want to do. And I will confirm that for all of our fellow defenders because there have been some questions over AI recently. If Marvel does move to AI writing or AI CGI or AI versions of their movies, that's kind of going to be the end of the podcast.

[02:18:07] We will no longer be covering the MCU if that's their choice. What? That's fine. We don't worry. We don't think that will happen. We hope that will happen. Over in Europe, they would have to have this is AI generated flash up in the corner because of the news. At all times. And then it would go, and this is AI slop. Exactly. That would be hilarious. So we will be moving on from movies that do that. So we're hoping that the panic on AI doesn't stretch into Marvel movies.

[02:18:36] Much like the satanic panic. The AI panic will be over soon. Hopefully. Along with the planet. Thank you, Paolo, so much. And yeah, I think like you, we all kind of shed tears at different points. And yeah, Secret Wars, rumor is potentially on Battleworld, there might be Spider-Arland, but I don't think so. I think they might just have him in his own little place and then give him a black costume or reference to a black costume.

[02:19:03] Tom Holland filming for the next 12 years to do all of the moves for 500 different Spider-Men. Yeah. Yeah. Or they'll use AI. No, they won't do that. Excellent stuff. One final voicemail from Steve Brown to close out our feedback. TV Podcast Industries. This is Steve, and this is for Spider-Man brand new day. Wow. I really enjoyed it. It was really fun. I can't wait to see it again. Hopefully, I will get a chance to go back to the theater and see it again.

[02:19:33] I have one question that I'll have to figure out the next time I view, but maybe you guys can answer it, is, was Sadie Sink the woman that he met early in the movie in his building that said, oh, we live on the same floor, and then was gone. There was no mention of her ever again, and I kind of, like, I didn't think about it until way later in the movie when Sadie Sink is revealed that I went, oh, was that the woman in? I think it was

[02:20:03] because she was, like, wearing a hoodie and she had red hair, and so, I think it was, and that makes sense as to how she knew where his apartment was from that brief flash she had in his head, but, yeah, I really enjoyed it. I can't wait to review it on Panels to Pixels with Mark and see what he thought of it. I can't wait to hear what you guys thought of it as well, because a few things that I thought were going to happen didn't happen, and so I'm a little disappointed with that, and the after credits scene, I'm a little confused

[02:20:32] about what that's supposed to mean for us. I don't know if that means, is that a Secret Wars flash? I don't know. Anyway, I guess I will talk to you later. Thanks so much, Steve, for the voicemail. It's great to hear your thoughts there, and really interested to hear what you've got to say over in Panels to Pixels as well. Yeah, no, the character that appears earlier on, that's not Settysink. Just because I saw it the second time, it looks like a completely different actress that's in there, and we think it's just

[02:21:01] a little Easter egg nod to Ursula from Spider-Man 2, or maybe Gwen Stacy. Yeah. That's what we think. As for the other speculation about the post-credits scene, we're not going to know, really, until someone confirms for definite what that is, which is probably going to be after Doomsday, when we start seeing trailers for what Secret Wars is and what it's going to be, but that's, again, that's the general kind of suspicion is that it's to do with Secret Wars, not Doomsday. Yeah. But thank you so much

[02:21:31] for the voicemail again. Absolutely. Yeah, thanks, Steve. And thanks so much to all our fellow defenders for listening along to our podcast all about the brand new day. I know we were delayed a little bit for this, partly because we were off on holidays. I've got a very big red tan to show off that I was on holidays, but it is going to stay red and then go back to white as it always does. Not going to be very tanned, unfortunately. So thanks for waiting for us. We will be back, we hope, with The Lanterns TV show, the DC TV show

[02:22:00] on HBO Max coming up later on in August. So make sure you stay subscribed to the podcast over at tvpodcastindustries.com and you can get in contact with us if you want to through our feedback email address and get in contact with us. We'll be back at tvpodcastindustries.com joining us over in our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash tvpodcastindustries or joining us over in our Discord, the details of which are in the show notes for this very episode. Yes, thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget, you can support our wee little podcast

[02:22:29] by heading on over to patreon.com slash tvpodcastindustries or buying Derek a coffee as he toils away into the wee hours of the night with an old whiskey in a coffee. It's an Irish coffee. Yes, by going to buymeacoffee.com slash tvpei and if you don't have any books to toss our way, that is okay. You know what you can do? You can share the podcast because sharing podcasts is what, gentlemen? Sharing the love.

[02:22:59] Thanks so much for joining us. We'll talk to you again next time. Yeah, thanks so much fellow defenders for joining us. Yes, thank you so much. Until next time, keep watching, keep listening and of course, keep defending. Bye. Bye now. Bye. Bye. There you go.

[02:23:42] Peter finds a confused woman and something much stranger, an unseen entity that jumps from body to body inside the Department of Damage Control, eventually freeing McGargan, a.k.a. the Scorpion. McGargan. Oh, it is McGargan. His first name is Mack. Eventually freeing McGargan, a.k.a. the Scorpion. What a... Peter returns to his anonymous life until he runs into Ned

[02:24:11] at a local bodega. At a local bodega. At a local bodega. This time, Peter introduces himself. Like, you can hear it goes inside his helmet and you see inside, you see the ground rushing. Just because you'll kill yourself if you we call it a helmet, it's a mask. You go, we go inside his mask and you see

[02:24:41] through his eyes and partially of his eyes, weird camera choice, but it worked really well. eventually being allowed in by the consent of Peter Parker into his mind because he's the only one she can't penetrate mentally. I knew you were going to do that as soon as I said penetrate, I was like, oh, I'm going to have to have to Sorry. Emotionally. She's seen his small potatoes.

[02:25:11] Small potatoes and penetrates. She's the only one, he's the only one that she's not been able to get inside his head. And