THE GRID - Spider-Man Spinning

Welcome back to the Friday edition of THE GRID, a newsletter that exists to celebrate things we once questioned with little to no remorse. Hope you all had a chance to check out Sterling’s solo submission last week. For as, pun intended, off the grid as Sterling operates, I love the thought of him sharing a room with Jack Johnson. They say never meet your heroes, and I say nay, meet your heroes and if they suck, find a new hero. As for me, I let the post-Odyssey buzz (and my Twitter notifications) run through my veins while I visited Banff with the family. Can’t recommend it enough; one of those places you kind of need to see, even if the wildfire smoke was drenching our views - pretty spectacular.

Side note: We are just a few people away from our 300th subscriber. If you are a loyalist, like what you see, feel free to share with a friend as we work toward a goal that ultimately means nothing. Maybe our 300th follower should guest-essay on the 2006 film 300, whose lasting legacy was teenagers like myself looking up the workouts online in hoping to get a 6-pack. Spoiler alert: these guys were juiced to the gills.

As we just passed our three-year anniversary of this newsletter, recent revelations have made me realize that it’s maybe less about being a “movie critic” and more about assessing the role of movies in our current cultural moment. As I sat down in my early screening of Spider-Man: Brand New Day paired with my own superpowers, Watermelon Sour Patch Kids (these cost as much as a Chipotle burrito did in 2014), I felt my own Spidey senses tingling. Certainly aided by the glucose shot of 25g of sugar and remembering taking my latest SSRI. To say it lightly, I have been unkind to the superhero genre lately, but this felt different.

I see readers of this very newsletter, the same ones who have checked out my Cinephile Syllabus and Letterboxd loggings, show the weekly pilgrimage to the local cinema as a worthy endeavor, still absolutely amped. Those same people would find it hard to believe I used to spend time sending emails to friends, breaking down comic canon to strangers, and receiving an email about pre-screening Shang-Chi felt like I had made it (after signing legal paperwork about spoilers). It felt a little like 2018 all over again. I’m vamping a bit because 1) I’ve genuinely been in a lot of thought about Spider-Man’s impact on modern movie-going 2) It’s hard to write a review for a movie that can’t be discussed without spoiling…and I’m not a jerk. That all to say, Spider-Man matters.

Spider-Man (2002) changed movies forever. Smarter people have written about Raimi’s changes to the movie post 9/11 (and the famous movie trivia about editing out the Twin Towers from the trailer). Tobey Maguire’s portrayal became a symbol of what comic book movies could be: unashamed of their origins, balanced between spectacle and emotion, with CGI advancements that met the moment. So it's no surprise that parking lots of fully dressed Spider-Men/Women were a common occurrence this week, because the Wall Crawler showed Hollywood that this genre would be the defining genre of the 21st Century, at least so far. I liken it to the introduction of the iPhone, your first social media experience, or the first time I saw Tiger Woods play golf. Things would never be the same. Ok, the actual movie, let’s discuss.

Tom Holland1 returns for his fourth (record-setting) appearance of Spider-Man. When we last left Peter Parker, he made the difficult decision to erase himself from everyone’s memory to protect the ones he loved (RIP Aunt May). He is older, damaged, and incredibly lonely. The tone that pulses throughout the movie is of a young person realizing the glory days are over: your friends don’t live with you, the bills are yours to pay. Or in this case, the local neighborhood still needs protecting, while your BFF and soulmate can’t remember your face.

In a sense, Spider-Man has always been ripe for a story about isolation; every superhero is challenged by the moral responsibility of saving the world while wanting to live out their life with the ones they love. A real work-life-balance pickle we got here. Holland, whose not-so-subtle press-tour comments reveal that he learned a thing or two on the set of The Odyssey and from Chris Nolan, delivers his most mature performance yet. My rating of this movie is firmly in the middle of whatever “good” and “great” is. Superhero movies get crowds riled up, but few performers and material have the ability to get into your feels like Spider-Man does, and the combination of Holland-Zendaya-Batalon continues to be one of the most effective groupings.

Destin Daniel Cretton2 takes over directing duties from Jon Watts, who finds the right vein to inject the excitement that comes from Spider-Man slinging his way through downtown New York. Much more aligned with the early Raimi films in visuals and textures, at worst this movie had me charmed. The (redacted) bad guy in this film makes Peter live in his trauma so severely; it sets him into arachnid puberty - not something we haven’t seen before, but one of the more effective bits of the movie. I think the most impressive part of the performance is straying from the typical superhero power-up with an ACDC needle drop and lots of kicking ass. Instead, Peter does everything in his power to get back to his old self, at the small chance his friends and lover remember who he was.

As an avid enjoyer of all the prior MCU/Sony3 collabs of Spidey, there has always been an ask for Parker to bring some of his friends into the fold. What works so effectively in Brand New Day is when Peter gets to have his own story. It’s no surprise that Holland has great chemistry with his real-life wife, and what we see between Holland and Zendaya was everything you could hope for. Zendaya, once sidelined as a sarcastic outsider, had me thinking about how she is a modern-day Brando in the life she injects into everything she is in.

Brand New Day is a fitting title because, when the movie strays from its core, it is mostly table-setting for a Marvel Universe we have yet to see. There are 3 major cameos that work to varying degrees (the potato-themed one was A+), but the last 40 minutes of the movie turns into a soft launch for another major player (strong performance, just a weird story shift), and I couldn’t help but have the thought that we still haven’t learned a lesson from the last years of misfires.

At the end of the day, it felt good to come out of an MCU movie that had its own personality. The truth is, Spider-Man/Holland can keep making these movies for the foreseeable future, and audiences will show up at levels that we rarely see in our lifetimes, because like I said, Spider-Man matters.

• Next week, I’m hoping to check out the movie where “two love-starved strangers crash into each other on the one night of the year when single people are allowed to have sex.” Hilarious, I can’t wait.

• I’ll be screening Tony here soon, fresh off his zany comedy (and #8 movie of the year); Matt Johnson has a tall challenge to bring Anthony Bourdain to the big screen.

A take I’ve long been convinced is just a fact: August is pretty clearly the worst month of the year, no? What’s a guy got to do around here to get a cold front? What use to be peak TV season has returned a rather dull summer slate. Nothing is grabbing my attention to its fullest. That’s when I ask you, reader, am I missing anything?

It was just a few weeks ago that I celebrated the third season of HotD. They were finding their rhythms; it seemed like the elixir recipe that was conjured up in the early Thrones days had been found again. We like to harp on the good things, but the last few episodes have really tested my patience. George RR Martin has a famous quote on the impact of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings that I couldn’t help think of:

“Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history, and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?”

What a quote! And one that seemed to have impacted the writing of the second season. I was loving the episodes where newly minted ruler Rhaenyra struggled with the admin duty of running a kingdom. It felt big even though it was never actually big, but the last two episodes have abandoned what kept me in the momentum in the earlier season. We’ve fallen into a trap of giving characters big moments, with no back story, leaving me asking 1) Who are you 2) Why should I care?

• I’ve continued to check out the Apple TV show Lucky, about a con artist whose multi-million dollar heist goes awry, leaving her life in ruins. It’s not exactly complicated, but I find it an enjoyable watch and plan on seeing it through.

• After hearing rants and raves, I was skeptical to check out the “sidequel” Star City, mostly due to the diminishing quality of the later seasons of For All Mankind. The story is set in an alternate universe where the Russians were the first to reach the moon. This time, we get what’s happening on the Soviet side, and the first few episodes have been fantastic.

• Speaking of squandered goodwill, Ted Lasso is back next week? Let’s see if we get back our 30-minute feel-good comedy or not.

“Suppose I could make a killing if I could be someone I’m not”

- Cross Country Blues, Center Mid

Thanks Cassandra Peeples for the guest DJ set this past week. Loved the tunes. Y’all hit me up if you want to curate any future Steady Radios!

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