Top 5 Superhero Power Discovery Moments + Movie Review: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse + Trailer Park: The Marvels

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to Movie Mike's movie podcast. I am your host Movie Mike, and today is a very superhero inspired show. I'm going to share with you my top five superhero power discovery moments of all time. And in the movie review, one of my most anticipated movies of the year, of the summer of my lifetime, Spider Man Across the Spider Versus finally out. To me, this feels like I don't have any but it would be like if I was having another kid. That is how excited I am about this. Because now I have to compare it to all the other Spider Man movies, but we'll get into that later. Keep that spoiler free. And in the trailer Park, we'll keep the superhero theme going and talk about the Marvel's trailer, which I feel like really isn't getting that much attention right now. Maybe it's because of everything going on in the MCU feels a little bit like there's a lot of uncertainty. So we'll get into what's going on with that movie where it fits in with all this. Thank you for being subscribed, Thank you for listening to this podcast. You guys mean the world to me. Shout out to the Monday Morning Movie Crew, and now let's talk movies.

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Speaker 2: In a world where everyone and their mother has a podcast, one man stands to infiltrate the ears of listeners like never before in a movie podcast.

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Speaker 1: A man with so much movie knowledge.

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Speaker 2: He's basically like a walking IMDb with glasses. From the Nashville Podcast Network, This is Movie Mikes Movie Podcast.

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Speaker 1: I love me a superhero origin story. Call me basic, but I think the best movie in any superhero franchise is always the first one. I just love it when a superhero discovers their powers for the first time. There's just something memorable about that. I think with every superhero movie I watch, that is the moment that just makes me decide whether or not I'm going to love this character. How they react when they first get their powers and the first thing they do. I think that is the most inspiring thing when it comes to superheroes. So I want to share with you my top five moments where superheroes discovered their powers. These are all the most unforgettable, iconic, game changing moments that defined the superhero genre. So this is not about who has the best origin story. It's just about who had the best on screen moment with their fresh new powers. So let's get right into the list. At number five from twenty seventeen, I'm going with Wonder Woman and Diana discovering her powers for the very first time. She's going through this training, and I feel like this was the first time I really felt connected with the character in DC. I cared about their backstory, and it was this moment that I feel like was never again replicated throughout DC when telling their origin stories. I feel like over the course of every single DC movie, they've kind of fumbled the origin story. It's supposed to be the most memorable moment in that character's life, and for most other characters, I don't really feel like that was the case. But wonder Woman in twenty seventeen really changed the way I felt about DC movies. I thought it was gonna be the turning point overall, and I just love gal Gado as Wonder Woman. I hope she would continue playing this character, and I feel like it's getting less and less likely that we're gonna get another Wonder Woman movie, but I will always remember this moment in twenty seventeen's Wonder Woman. Never let your guard down you expect about to be fair be fair. So that's from that moment in training puts her wrist together, this big radio wave comes out, and this is the first time you see Diana as what would be wonder Woman. She became my favorite character in the Justice League after this movie. So at number five, I have Wonder Woman from twenty seventeen. At number four, I'm sticking in the DC universe. I'm going with twenty thirteen's Man of Steel and it is Superman's first flight from director Zack Snyder. Now, whenever I first watched the Man of Steel movies, they didn't really resonate with me, and I think it was just my connection with the character, and I always felt Superman to be kind of a generic, boring character. I just recently rewatched the very first Superman movie, and let me tell you, there's some weird things in that movie. And I get in the seventies when that movie came out, it was probably a lot more groundbreaking. But there's some things I don't even want to repeat that are in that movie that made me feel uncomfortable. So I feel like twenty thirteen's greatly improved on that, but it didn't quite get it right. That's why I'm way more excited to see what James Gunn is going to do with the character. So even though I wasn't the biggest fan of Zack Snyder's Superman, this moment to me is undeniable because it's so special and it's the story of kl l aka Superman, crash landing on Earth in Smallville, Kansas, being adopted by human parents, them choosing to love him, teach him to hide his powers as they think that the whole world will reject him for who he actually is. He grows up, starts to learn about all these extraordinary abilities that he has, still struggling to find his place in the world, and then he finally learns about who he is. And then this is the moment where he's out in the mountains. They're covered in snow and for the first time he takes flight.

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Speaker 2: And time they will join you in the sun gown. In time he will help them accomplish one does.

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Speaker 1: So this was the best part in this movie, the best on screen moment that Henry cavill to me had as Superman, because it was just that impactful. And I think that's because the kid version of me and even the adult version of me thinks, if I can only have one superpower, it would be flying. It's the thing we imagine that would be the coolest, like all these things we could do if we could fly, And seeing Superman do that for the very first time was just so significant in such a cool feeling of seeing him discover his abilities and flying for the very first time and not being completely comfortable with it. It was like witnessing something special like Superman being born. So even though I wouldn't even consider this one of my top ten superhero movies of all time, this moment in particular is one that I will always remember. And I loved Superman discovering that he can fly. So at number four is the first flight from Man of Steel. At number three, we'll move over into the Marvel space. I'm going Captain America, the First Avenger from twenty eleven, the moment that Steve Rogers turns into Captain America. I think Captain America has one of the more underappreciated origin stories and first movies out of every Marvel character. It takes us all the way back to nineteen forty one where he becomes the first Avenger. It's interesting to me how much Marvel movies in the first phase dealt so much with war, and I think it goes back to the origin of comic books and at the time that they were the most significant in the US, we were experiencing war in the forties. The very first Captain America comic book is him slapping Hitler in the face. And then when you look at Captain America the First Avenger, it's set in the nineteen forties where World War Two is going on. So there's just so much of a connection with Steve Rogers and fighting the Nazis and his connection with being a soldier going into war that that has been continued out through Marvel, and then from the First Avenger you see it again with Iron Man later it is just a different war. And when you look at superhero origin stories, a lot of it has to do with the technology, the experiments that they do. In this case, he gets accepted into this experimental program that turns him into the super soldier we know as Captain America. And here is a little bit of that moment. And the thing I loved about Captain America discovering his paw is that he automatically knows how to use them. And you think of Steve Rogers, who was just this underweight kid but had this drive. He just didn't have the physical capabilities to be in the army and be the soldier he wanted. But suddenly, through the use of this technology, through this experimental program, he is suddenly this super ripped up human with this incredible strength, the ability to run fast. You think about it. That is the most Captain America thing and shows you so much about his character right away. In this scene is also his first use of a shield. He said, it's not a shield, it's whenever he's chasing the guy running through town at the same speed as cars. He jumps on the cab as the guy's shooting at him, and then the yellow cab crashes, spins around, does a bunch of flips, and the door completely comes off, and then Captain America grabs the door and uses it as a shield to protect him from the bullets. That's the first time we see him using the shield. So you get a two for one here. So unlike other superheroes that take a little bit of time to get used to their powers navigate their powers, I love that Captain America just automatically knew what to do, because that is who Steve Rodgers is. So at number three is the first time Steve Rogers turns in to captain America. At number two on my list of superhero power discovery moments, I'm going with iron Man from two thousand and eight, and it is iron Man's first flight. You may say his first flight came when he escaped the cave in the Mark one in the suit that he created while in captivity, which I guess technically would be the correct the first time he uses his powers, But to me, he becomes Iron Man later in the movie, so it's not the Mark one that he escapes with that ends up getting destroyed. It is later when he has the Mark II, which is pretty much exactly like the Iron Man's suit, except it's not its iconic gold and red color yet it's all silver. I love the look of this suit, the chrome titanium, the steel alloy. I wish they would have brought this suit back in another movie. They should have an Iron Man multiverse where this suit makes an appearance again. And we only get this glimpse of the use of the suit, But here is that moment from the very first iron Man taking his first flight.

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Speaker 3: Sometimes you got to run before you can walk, ready and three two One.

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Speaker 1: What I loved about this moment and what I loved about the first Iron Man movie is it really set the tone for the MCU. It was the first MCU movie in two thousand and eight, and it got everything right. And this moment in particular embodies everything that makes the MCU great, and really everything that makes any superhero movie origin story great. It had it all. It had spectacle, it had humor, and it had the special effects because this movie really couldn't have been made at any other time. I recently watched the entire revisit with Kevin Feigi and Jon Favreau talking about how it's been fifteen years since this movie, and they went into a lot of detail on how important the visual effects were in this movie, and it was coming off the heels of the Transformers and the use of CGI that had an emphasis on the texture of objects. And that's really what we got in that Transformers movie is you believe that the CGI characters were real metal objects. And it was the first time they were really able to get the technology right and make hard services look as realistic as possible, and that is what iron Man truly benefited from at the time it came out in two thousand and eight, and even now fifteen years later, the visuals in this movie still hold up. And it was this moment in particular in Iron Man that really set the tone for the entire studio. Tony Stark discovered that what he has spent all this time creating actually works. He's able to fly. He goes a little bit too high because the suit starts freezing, and then he comes crashing down. And then the perfect way to cap off this moment is him crashing back into his garage, landing on the car, coming off this adrenaline, and then you have that robot arm come out and extinguish him in a very comedic manner. So it's that little moment that also brings the humor that we love in Marvel movies. So I believe that this first flight for iron Man is symbolic of the MCU having its first flight of being successful. So at number two, I have iron Man's first flight from two thousand and eight, and at number one you knew it was gonna make it, but you had to question to here, so which one is it going to be? You know? My favorite superhero. It's Spider Man. I easily could have made one, two and three y'all Spider Man from all the different versions we have had on the big screen, but I decided to limit it to one the most iconic, And I'm going back to the og to Toby McGuire, to two thousand and two Spider Man. You get not only the first time Toby maguire as Peter Parker crawls on the wall, which is really, to me, the most iconic moment in any superhero movie, That moment where suddenly he realizes all the changes that are happening to his body and he puts his hand up on that brick wall and sticks to it and just starts climbing that thing. That moment is embedded in my head as the most iconic superhero moment of all time, because as soon as he discovers that he can scale walls, he gets to the top of the building, he realizes that he can also jump from building to building, and that is the moment we experience after that, and it's that energy in that moment of him being filled with joy as he jumps from building to building, discovering now that he is Spider Man, he is a superhero, and as that's not enough to end this scene, you get him discovering that he can shoot webs out of his wrists. Go web fly, pumping away, web Go, Go Go web Go. So it's the way Toby maguire perfectly played this scene with all the excitement and it truly being a magnificent moment on the screen. And you think back in two thousand and two of really how new good special effects were, like this moment had every chance to be ruined by cheap special effects bat cinematography that was limited to the time of it being early two thousands, but that is not the case at all. This movie is not hurt at all. If anything, it sets the gold standard of how to create moments like this, And I think it's also due to the storytelling here, So I credit that a lot to director Sam Raimi and what he did with this trilogy. But this moment is my favorite moment. So at number one, I'm going with the first time Crawling and Spider Man's first swing from two thousand and two. I do have some that almost made my list from Zack Snyder's Justice League. The first time Cyborg uses his powers and he discovers everything his body can do. He can hack into the Internet, and Cyborg is a really cool character, but we really didn't see that in the Justice League movie. A lot of his backstory was cut out, and you really didn't get a grasp on his capabilities and what his character meant to the Justice League unless you watch the Zack Snyder version of Justice League, which in its four plus hours, of course you get a more backstory. And I really didn't think that that would change my perspective on any of the characters, but it really showed me how Cyborg did not get his fair shake in the Justice League and really how they did him completely wrong. So I thought his character benefited more than any other one in the Justice League Snyder cut. I also really enjoyed the first time ant Man shrinks down. And I know ant Man gets a lot of crap, but there is a lot of charm to the way Paul Rudd plays ant Man, and there's just so many fun visual effects that go into him shrinking down to the size of a nant. And maybe it's because of my fascination with Honey I shrink the kids and what I associate that with. I just found that a lot of people didn't enjoy this first movie as much as I did. Another one that almost made my list was whenever Bruce Wayne's parents died and he inherited all that money. It's funny to me that Bruce Wayne really has no superpowers other than being super rich. So yeah, there's the moment and Batman begins where he goes through all that training and gets all, you know, the tactical knowledge of how to fight and how to be what essentially is the groundwork of Batman. But the true power of Batman and also Tony Stark for that matter, is having a lot of money. So there's not really that moment for Batman to discover suddenly that he is a superhero. So for him, it really it goes back to that moment where his parents get shot that influences his decision to want to be a Vigilanti and then just needing to use all of his money to give them all the gadgets and then capabilities to turn into Batman. So yeah, Batman inheriting his money. That should have made my list in the top five right. One that I almost included was the first time the Avengers first assemble, which I kind of feel like is their first moment of discovering their powers, because you have all these characters that already know their powers and they think that individually they could all save the world. But it was in this moment in The Avengers in New York, where they're all standing with their backs against each other. I feel like that is them unleashing their powers for the first time and realizing that, hey that individually, yeah, we're all really powerful. But together, all of our powers complement each other in different ways, and all together we are truly unstoppable. So if you work as a team, you become an entirely different unit. So I see the Avengers all together as their own superhero. So I almost included that, but it did kind of feel like cheating. I was also thinking back to Aucaman first discovering his powers as a kid in the aquarium and he's able to control the fish, and I think the reason I love that moment so much is because it reminded me of Harry Potter discovering that he can also do magic in the first Harry Potter movie, where he's able to put his jerk cousin into the exhibit with the snake. So that moment would have also in my list if you considered Harry Potter a superhero, but he's not. He's a wizard. Also, one of my favorite Marvel characters is Cyclops, and I love the moment in X Men Apocalypse from twenty sixteen where he first discovers his powers. And you have Cyclops as a teenager in high school. His eyes are hurt, and so he goes to the bathroom and that is the first time he's able to shoot lasers out of his eyes and completely wrecks the bathroom. I just always felt like there was never the perfect on screen version of Cyclops. I thought they did a pretty good job with James Marsden's version in the two thousand X Men. I would love to see a new adaptation of Cyclops, give them a solo Marvel movie. And one character I felt never got their fair shake at having their origin moment and first discovering their powers is the Hulk, because that two thousand and three version is the true travesty, and like I was talking about earlier, of special effects just not being there in the early two thousands, Hulk is a great example of that because the version we got in that movie looks like a character that was completely unrendered. It was way too green and colorful. It almost looks like when you see footage of somebody developing a video game and it's that very early version where they're just trying to work through the mechanics and you know this is not how it's actually going to look like in the game. That is exactly what they ended up using in Hulk. It was this very unfinished version that was not completely right. It looked very uncooked. It was raw cookie dough on the screen. And I love the Hulk. If I had to say my top three Marvel characters, it would be the ones I mentioned Spider Man, Hulk, and Cyclops. I just think they were always the coolest. It reminds me of playing the Capcom Versus Marvel Arcade game back in the day. Those were always the three characters I wanted to be close. Runner up. Fourth to that would be Wolverine, and I feel like when you look at all those characters and their on screen origin stories, the only one that's been right is Spider Man and having that moment with Toby Maguire and having it again with Andrew Garfield, which I felt was still pretty good. Him discovering his powers in the subway as he's sticking to everything, and then again with Miles Morales kind of along those same lines, not being able to control him sticking to everything, which was a lot more playful. Spider Man has the best, but when you look at all the other ones in that list, Hulk doesn't have it, not in the two thousand and three version. And I still stand by loving the incredible Hulk with Edward Norton. I will die on that hill. I still think that is a good movie, even though everybody else thinks that is terrible. But he also didn't get his fair shake in that movie of him first discovering his powers. And then you look at Wolverine, who had his own origin movie in two thousand and nine, which because he is one of my favorite characters, I still enjoyed that movie, but it's viewed as one of the worst comic book adaptations of all time, not only what they did with the Wolverine character in that, but also giving us the worst version of Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. And then you have Cyclops, who really wasn't the star of those early two thousands X Men movies, even though I still feel like those are all really great just as the X Men movies went along into the twenty tens, they became less and less significant. So once he got to X Men Apocalypse in twenty sixteen, there was no chance of his character really cutting through again at that time. So I think now that Disney owns the rights to Cyclops, they got to step it up. So that is my list. If there's one you think needs to be added, let me know. Hit me up on email moviemke d at gmail dot com, or on socials at Mike Distro, on TikTok, Instagram, and Twitter. I'll come back with my spoiler free review a Spider Man Across the Spider and in the trailer park, we'll talk about the Marvels, all right. One of my most anticipated reviews of the year, Spider Man Across the Spider Verse. It's been five years since we've seen Miles Morales. If you're watching on YouTube or a clip on TikTok or Instagram, I am in my full Spider Man costume. Probably why my voice sounds a little bit muffled. This is my commitment to this podcast, to this review a movie that just took every one of my expectations and exceeded it, and I have so many things to say about this movie that I even watched this movie differently. All Right, before I get fully into this, I gotta take off my mask because I feel like, all right, here we go. I feel like I was suffocating in that. And also I feel like my voice is a little bit muffled, So I felt like I even watched this movie a little bit differently. Usually when I go watch a movie, I'm watching a little bit with my brain of somebody who is gonna review the movie later. I'm looking for my angle, and sometimes it takes me out of the experience a little bit because I'm thinking of all the points I'm gonna make and everything I have to say about it in the review. When I watched this movie, I will be completely, one hundred percent honest with you, the movie review part of my brain was shut off, and I just completely enjoyed this movie and allowed myself to be fully submerged in everything. I wasn't comparing it to the original. I just wanted to go in as a movie fan, as somebody who the reason they do this is because movies like this exist, and I still stand by that is why the first into the Spider Verse is my favorite Spider Man movie because it was so groundbreaking. It took the Spider Man formula and completely flipped it and gave us something new and refreshing. And you have a character like Spider Man that maybe the general public has a little bit of fatigue with. Not me, I'm in a full Spider Man cossuin right now, give me all Spider Man all the time. But you had the Toby Maguire, you had the Andrew Garfield, we have Tom holland we feel like we've seen so much of the character that it's hard to make it exciting again. And that's what the twenty eighteen version did, and what across the Spider Verse did was it took what made the first movie great and amplified everything to an eleven. So the animation style, the storyline, the entire take on the struggle to be Spider Man. It felt like there was so much more on the line, and it felt like this movie existed in its own world. And the entire thing really felt like a You four experienced to me, and I'm not saying that lightly and I truly mean that that is how I felt watching this movie. So let's start first with what the movie is about. It picks up after the first one, but we have some years of separation. Miles Morales is more grown up now, and I've I've never really seen this in an animated movie. Is the character himself looks different, his voice maybe sounds a little bit deeper. And we saw an animated character get older. I can't really think of any other instance where that has been executed so much so to the point now when I see and I went back and rewatched into the Spider Verse from twenty eighteen, looking at those stills and watching that movie, you think, oh, man, he looks like a little kid in that movie. And somehow, through the power of animation, you have aged a character and it feels like us as the audience, have grown with him. That is a feat in itself. So it's him still in high school. He is struggling to maintain the life of Spider Man and also be a good son, be a good student. So that's where his story kicks off in this movie. But what I loved about it, and again we'll keep everything spoiler free. I'll do his full spoiler review later because there's so many more things I want to get into. But the way the movie opens is not with the story of Miles Morales. It opens with Gwen Stacy aka Spider Woman, and I love their decision to do this because the first ten minutes are completely dedicated to her and her story and quickly just establish all these things about Gwen Stacy, and they do it so well and hit you an emotional level, so not only getting to know more about her story, but visually the animation was so different, and I think that was a great way to open the movie because it was unlike what we saw in the first movie. All of the opening scene with Gwen was almost like this watercolor, live living animation that even the expressions that her character gave were portrayed through like bleeding colors on the screen. And there were also so many different animation elements in that scene that it was a huge flex And that is how this movie really turned up. The animation is the first one did combine several different animations, and what gives the first movie its look is the use of two D animation combined with three D animation, and it makes it look like a comic book living on the screen. It's all the detail and all the coloring, even giving it the little dots that make it look like it's an actual comic book. That's what made the first one great, but in this one there's even more attention to detail and all of these animation styles working together so well that in a movie where there are so many characters, there are over two hundred and eighty different variations of Spider Man, a lot of different villains, they all have their unique animation style, and myself being just such a big fan of animation, it is one of the best looking movies that has ever entered my eyeballs. And I don't think I have to make that case to any Marvel fan or any Spider Man fan, but I feel like if some people are borderline wanting to watch this movie because you think animation means it's a cartoon, which means it's for kids, that is not the case. There are so many great movies, not even superhero movies, that I could recommend to you, that are my favorite animated stories. It's just a different kind of medium. It would be like somebody saying now who only played video games back in the day, saying that video games are just for kids. That is not the truth anymore. Video games are so much more advanced that adults are playing them. Everybody plays video games. It's not just pac Man anymore. That is the same thing with animation. I feel like, when done correctly, like in the Spider Man animated movies, there are so many more ways to make you invoke emotion, and I feel like it resonates more that I forget that it's an animated movie. These characters feel real to me, and something they really flex on in this movie is the frame rate. So what frame rate is imagine you're watching this animated movie. Animation. Frame rate is how fast the pictures move, So the more pictures that change in a second, the smoother the movie looks. So tip it's twenty four frames per second in this movie. Why some characters look different, Some things look smoother than others, and some things look a little bit more apparent that it's an animated character, It's because they play with all different kinds of frame rates. So some are moving really fast. So some characters are moving at sixty frames per second, other characters are moving as little as twelve frames per second. Spider Punk in particular, in this movie, he's a character that has all different kinds of frame rates in his head, his jacket. So that's why this movie just looks so different, even more so than the original movie. So if you're a fan of animation like me, you're gonna love this one. But aside from the visuals in this movie, you look at the story. This movie has so much heart and what I love the most about Spider Man movies, which I believe that every Spider Man story should be a trilogy. That's just the way it should go. The first one is the origin story. The second one I always love because it is the ruggle of Spider Man dealing with being the superhero and being the person underneath the mask. And the take on that situation in this movie was so different and so thought provoking that I don't want to say it's the best one, because I don't think this story would exist if we didn't have all the other versions of Spider Man. But it's taking all the things that make that struggle great and making it so much more impactful because in this movie, you have Miles and you have Gwenn Stacy, and they're trying to save all these other Spider people from this villain who goes by the name of Spot, and this movie becomes that same story of sacrifice and how do you save those people around you? And not only that, it also hits you with the love story. You have Miles and Gwen who haven't seen each other since the first movie, and now Miles is dealing with why she never came to see him. You get Gwen's version two of knowing everything that she's been through, why she decided not to go Miles, and then you have the whole will they want they throughout the movie, which that is another way they made this movie different. It's not the same old Peter Parker and Mary Jane. It seems like there's so much more on the line when they both have the superhero qualities and they are both different versions of Spider Man. I love their love story and it made me feel like a teenager again, and just thinking that an animated movie can make you feel that, I thought was really powerful. The scene that's also in the trailer, whenever they are above the city and they are hanging upside down, one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen an animation, and just that shot on its own, I think is one of the most iconic Spider Man images that has ever been created. And that's what Spider Man Across and into the Spider Verse has done is created these amazing stills, and I think those scenes are really only rivaled by the first iconic Spider Man scene, which is the upside down kiss between Toby maguire and Kirsten Dunst. So when the question is, which is what everybody's been asking me, is Across the Spider Verse better than Into the Spider Verse right now, I am going to say no. The first one was so groundbreaking with the animation, with the character of Miles. It took everything that made the Spider Man movies great and threw away all the rules. You could do anything. There's not just one Spider Man anymore. There's not just one animation style. You can really do anything now to really make these movies fun. There were so much great humor in that original one, but out of everything, that movie had so much heart, and I think that's why it resonated so much with audiences, why it did so well with the critics the box office. But I think when you look at the overall story, the first one just feels so much more complete. And I think about it, if I could only put one of these movies into a vault to be remembered forever. I would still put the first ones. They are both great in their own way, and they are both leaps and bounds above any superhero story right now now. So just for that reason, if I can only pick one of these movies, because the first one feels like such a great origin story, It has its own message completely intact. In that first movie, it establishes the character of Miles Morales, and I just feel that it has already stood the test of time coming out in twenty eighteen, and I still revisit the movie at least once a year, and I love it every single time. I know, I just watched this movie, but based on all of the elements with the storyline where Miles's character goes throughout this movie and what's coming next, which is a big part of this, I feel like the first one will still stand the test of time more than the sequel. Don't get me wrong. It has me hype, it has me excited. I left the movie theater so energized and mainly relieved that it didn't downgrade. That we didn't get this second one and they missed the mark or the story not be as great. I think there were a couple moments where I wanted it to get to the point a little bit more. But I love the fact that it explored all these universes, it had time to breathe. The part of me that just wanted to get to the action a little bit more is the only reason I felt that this one just was a little bit below the original one. So this movie had it all. It had the visuals, it had the action, it had the love story, it had more Spider Man that you could wrap your finger around. And I think for me who is not just a fan of Spider Man in the movies, but also the video games. I've played the N sixty four, the PlayStation games, the PS four game, the PS five game that's about to come out I'm looking forward to, but also the cartoon from Back in the Day, all the other Spider Man animated series. It's just if you are just the biggest fan of Spider Man, this is the one for you. This is it. But I would have to say, I'm gonna have a little bit of a different scale on this movie. I'm just comparing it to every other Spider Man movie. And for the reason that I believe that it's just a a bid below the first one. If it was any other movie, it would be a five. But I look at Spider Man movies like they are my children. That is how I feel about these movies, because anytime a new one comes out, it's like, how do you pick your favorite? It's hard to based upon that. Into the Spider Verse is a five. This is just a smidge below it, So I have to stick to that reasoning. So for Spider Man Across the Spider Verse, I give it four point five out of five webs.

00:35:32
Speaker 2: It's time to head down to movie Mike Traylor Paul.

00:35:37
Speaker 1: The Marvels aka Captain Marvel two is coming out on November tenth, and maybe I am alone in saying this, but I am truly excited for this movie, and I am surprised at how little attention and traction that this trailer is getting. I think people and Marvel fans just have this disdain for this character that I feel is a little unwarranted. I thought the first Captain Marvel movie was pretty solid. Now I do feel it came around some circumstances that I wasn't the biggest fan of at the time. It did feel a little bit rush to me. Even the way they filmed Captain Marvel. It was all shot out of place, and I think when this movie came out it almost felt like it was just rushing to get out in order for Endgame to make sense. I feel like, in the grand scheme of things, it should have came out earlier. It should have had a little bit more separation, and I think it would have had a little bit more of an impact because I like the character of Captain Marvel. I like Brie Larsen. I think her origin story in that movie is pretty great, and her powers are pretty undeniable when she is arguably the most powerful Avenger. Now, I do have some issues with that, particularly when it comes to her role in Endgame. She is this super powerful character that probably has the ability to take on Thanos by herself. But she comes back at the beginning of the movie to save Tony Stark and then kind of dips out and says, there are a lot of other things going on in this universe, and I can't be here to help you guys. Even though she does become an Avenger later on and then helps them later in the movie, I feel like her character should have been written a lot differently knowing how powerful she is. I think if she would have become a more important part of the team, aside from just early on helping them find and defeat Thanos early on in that movie, it would have been a completely different movie, and it would have left a lot of a better framework going into a Captain Marvel sequel, because after that first one really wasn't that well received. I feel like it's not really leaving a lot of the more hardcore Marvel fans wanting a taste for more Captain Marvel. So what you have in this movie is you have Real Arson back as Captain Marvel. You also have Miss Marvel from the Disney Plus series, and then you have Monica Rambo who first came to us in One Division. And how they are all connected in this movie is they trade places with each other every time they use their powers. So now they have to team up in order to fix this and in order to face a villain. So before I get into more about the Marvels, here's just a little bit of the trailer. Hi, We're looking for Amalaka. Okay, So our powers are entangled. I can manipulate like energy and you I can totally show you. Hi wherever you were. So this trailer does a couple things right, but I could see why people have issues buying into this movie. Even myself, who I'm excited for the Captain Marvel character to get another shot at it, I'm not completely sold by this trailer just yet. I feel like it's coming off as a little bit too playful and fun. Which you have one side of who enjoy the humor, who just want to go and have a good time at the movie. You have the other side of fans who wants something that's going to advance the entire plot of the MCU and connect into this big story. So it has to have a lot of action and it has to have a lot of significance when it comes to creating an entire storyline for us to follow along to I myself, I think that we need to get away from all of these movies being able to be so interconnected. I think that truly ended with Endgame. So I think that argument is a little bit outdated, and in order for the MCU to really advance, you have to have these singular stories that are actually worth a crap. That is what it comes down to. You have to sell one individual movie that a casual fan can just hop into and not feel like they have to do all this homework, and I think that will actually create better movies. Wanting to have all these stepping stones to get to some bigger endgame. Again, that's just not sustainable, and I think the superhero genre, in order to survive, we need to get away from that. We don't want to go the way of the Western and look so dated and think like, how can you still be making a superhero movie. At the end of the day, you just have to make a really great movie that stands on its own and then embodies everything that made the first movies great. In the MCU, so, I don't think the problem is that nothing great has been made since Endgame and everything is falling off. I think in the MCU, the only problem is tone, and that is what I get from this trailer is that I don't really know the tone of this movie. I got that a lot more in the first movie. She's this really powerful person who overcame this not knowing where she came from, and is now harnessing these powers to do good and has the ability to do these really amazing things. I think her first time discovering her Powers is also one of my favorites. So what is Captain Marvel going to do now in the March which is kind of a little bit confusing because it is a sequel to the first one, but now it's called the Marvels and it's inside the mc I just feel like the title itself starts to confuse people, So I worry that this will further get away from setting what the tone really is in phase five. I also think we have a director problem in the MCU. I think the best movies that have come out of the studio have been ones from one director where they had their entire vision play out from movie one to two to three. Those have been the best movies. Say what you will about the Ani Man movies, they had one director, Peyton Reid. It feels like they were all cohesive, like I was saying earlier with James Gunn and the Guardians movies, John Watts with the Spider Man trilogy so far. But now with the continuation of Captain Marvel, you have a different director, Nina DaCosta, who is a great director. She did Candy Man and she is the first black female director for Marvel, so I do have faith in her. As a director, I just feel that I'm worried that this movie is going to flop and set a pretty bad precedent for all the other MCU movies set to be released after this, and I don't want to see that happen. And with the trailer not getting a whole lot of attention, with it not really being that anticipated, with it getting its release date moved several times. It was originally supposed to come out last year, got pushed back even further, was supposed to come out in the summer, but there's so much great competition in the summer. It's been pushed to the fall, which there's also some good competition there. I feel like this one may get missed a little bit. And I also feel like right now some people are just hating on Marvel movies for the sake on hating on Marvel movies because it's not like the Marvel everybody grew up with, which is also weird for me to come to grips with that. We are fifteen years into all these movies, so I don't think it will be the one to win everybody back. Best case scenario, it doesn't have everybody running away. But I'm still excited for it. So again, The Marvels is coming out later this year on November tenth. Maybe I'm the only one who'll be there.

00:43:07
Speaker 2: Head that for was this week's edition of movie Line.

00:43:10
Speaker 1: Tram or Bar and that's gonna do it for another episode here of the podcast. But before I go, I gotta do what I do every single week. I went kind of full wrapper on that moment. Gotta do what I do every week. It is my listener shout out of the week. How you get one of these? All you have to do is send me an email Moviemike d at gmail dot com, comment on my TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, which you can find all the links to that in the episode notes of this podcast. But this week I went over to my Instagram page, which new episodes are always released on Monday, and on Monday I also post a clip which is usually a condensed version of my movie review that week as a video on my Instagram. And last week was the Little Mermaid review, and oh my gosh, Disney fans are vicious. I did not expect my most controversial movie review of the year to be for The Little Mermaid. I wasn't even fully set on seeing that movie. It is the first time I've ever been threatened by a movie review I gave. I was so surprised to see the toxicity that can be the Disney fandom. So this is actually one of the more tame comments, which I know. You don't have to agree with me on every single opinion I have on movies. I do not expect you to. I am just telling you exactly how I feel. You can always know that you're getting my true, honest opinions without any influence on it. But I don't expect you to ever completely agree with everything I say. But just so you know, I read all the comments. So this week's listener shout out goes to Frederick Jay, who actually disagreed with me and that's okay. Frederick wrote, as a diehard movie Mike's Movie Podcast fan, I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with all the comments about Flounder. It kind of sucks that a fish that wasn't even on the screen as much as all the other characters could cause so much disdain for a movie that, despite being a remake, was a beautiful movie overall. Frederick, first of all, thank you for being the first person who I've ever seen described as a diehard fan of this podcast, So thank you for listening and thank you for commenting. I still stand by my fact that I did not like to look a Flounder in that movie, and it completely took me out of the experience of fully enjoying that movie. But the movie did win me over in the end, and I think that's what some people who only saw that small clip of my full review did not understand. So I encourage you if sometimes you just don't listen to that week's episode and you only see the clip on Instagram, you gotta go and listen to the full review because I give it an all full context that I actually did enjoy that movie and it did win me over in the end, So I believe there are some things they got right and some things they got wrong, one of those being Flounder. So thank you Frederick J. For commenting on Instagram and for listening every single week. And that is what I love the most about doing this podcast is starting a conversation about movie. So a great to do that is comment on the videos I put up on Instagram and TikTok and start the conversation there because I would love to hear what you have to say about these movies as well, so thank you for listening. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and until next time, go out and watch good movies and I will talk to you later