Oh is it show die?
People say good money to see this movie.
When they go out to a theater, they want cloth, sodas, pop, popcorn and no monsters.
In the protection booth, everyone pretend podcasting isn't boring.
Run it off. I stared death in the face and for the first time I saw my true self, my son, they are play we are?
Why do you hunt?
My father?
What's evil into the world?
I'd take it out?
Which shall.
Power is about?
Swift? Tell me how about this hunter?
What's you're on his list?
There's only one way off?
Who's next?
If we?
If we will?
If in places? Who you really are? And you would call me a blitzend?
You are exactly like our father, just another man on tam or drown.
There is an animal in Juana pass.
Don't you want to know why? Oh wait, they're right.
Welcome to the projection booth. I'm your host, Mike White. Joining me, of course, is mister Chris Tashue.
I prefer to be known as Craven Morehead.
Also on this episode is the one and only father Malone.
My grandmother died and then I never saw her again.
On this episode, it's a very special crossover with the Culture Cast and Midnight Viewing. We were talking about Craven the Hunter. I am Craven some Craven from twenty twenty four, directed by JC Chandor written by a whole bunch of people. Here we've got Richard wank And and the art markham ampersand Matt Holloway all taken a swipe with this script.
It is all about Craven, the titular Craven serge A craven Off aka Craven the Hunter, and his complex relationship with his ruthless father, Nikolai Cravenoff, who's played by the one only Russell Crowe. Mcamuel, Yeah and yeah, just how he became Craven through magic and all kinds of stuff. We will be spoiling this film, So if you don't want anything ruin, please turn off the podcast and come back after you've gone to the theater. Maybe rent to
this on video and we will still be here. So, Chris, what did you think of Craven the Hunter.
I am so disappointed that you guys made me watch this movie. This is one of the most unintelligible pieces of shit I have seen in a very long time. If you've if you've kept up with the news and the information that's been coming out about the movies leading up to its release. This is the last Spider Verse Sony movie. That's it. There's nothing else. This is the last one, and good fucking riddance. Because this movie is
borderline unintelligible, if it's not just completely unintelligible. I don't understand why Aaron Taylor Johnson is in this movie other than if it was the Dakota Johnson of it. All words, I need money, I like money, Give me money, and I'll play Craven because I can't imagine he read this script and went, Wow, what scenes fealing I'm gonna be doing? Is Craven the Hunter. I was not surprised that it
was quite terrible. However, I will say, on the scale of things, it somehow still manages to be better than Madam Webb. That is damning it with the faintest of faint craze. But for me, this movie was at times laughably bad. I can't believe that the movie was two fucking hours long on top of everything else, as if we needed to be bombarded with two hours of this nonsense. But I did not enjoy it. It was a slog
in my opening statements. If Aaron Taylor Johnson is in fact cast as James Bond, that's all I'm gonna say, because I'm not looking forward to that. If that is in fact going to end, beat the case. There's my early opening salvo. And as they say, manifesto about Craven the Hunter, what about you, Father Malone?
I liked it. Of the Sony spinoff movies that aren't directly Spider Man movies, I think it's the best of them. I enjoyed it more than any of the Venom movies three of those fuckers, certainly more than Madame Webb. What else did we have? They did one more? Right?
It's Mormon time.
Okay, this was way more fun than this movie. Yes, oh yes, yeah. If you like this, you once took itself way too seriously.
Right, I agree?
And I appreciated that about it, because Morbius took itself just as seriously. It's just that it was fucking terrible, and if any joy you got from that movie was making fun of it, this is a more complete story.
Look.
My problems with this movie are as a fan of Marvel comics who remember Craven being one thing a villain, and a pretty good villain at that to turning him directly into a fucking superhero, because the story is effectively the same.
Here.
We get Craven, we get the look they retconned him in the early eighties JM. Demitaeus and he took over Craven. He wret coond of a lot of the Russian heritage and stuff. We get Craven, we get his dad, we get his brother, who is the chameleon, who is the first Spider Man villain. We get a lot of what's really right about Craven, but at the same time he's
noble and doing all the right things. The problem with these Sinister six type spinoff movies that they've been attempting is that they never give us the actual fucking villain as a character. But compared to all the venoms and the morbiuses and stuff, as a story of a family and this weird superhero kind of world that they're plucked into. I enjoyed it. There was a definite hero villain story going on. I like characters. I don't know what to tell you. I liked that they had Calypso in here,
who's his love interest from the comics. And I actually think they did her character better than they did in the comics. I don't think it was great. I think this movie needed to come out six years ago and then there would have been some hope for the Sony universe. Then it would have felt like they were building towards something. I think there's a lot of superfluous stuff in this movie.
I don't think it's the best by any means. This is not a great movie, but comparatively speaking, had a good time.
I will say you've said it, and I've said it before, and I think Mike will probably equit as well. The fact that these movies are coming out in twenty twenty four is wild to me. These movies feel like they should have been coming out in the mid tens, if not the late two thousands. Like this style of making superhero movies is not a thing anymore, and I hope they realize it because they're not getting any further with any of this.
Sony is like country music. It's almost ten years behind the times, Like country gets poppy eventually. Now country is getting a bit hip hoppy and it's always a little tenure. So Sony's just, oh, we figured out actually how to do a superhero movie too late.
Yeah, I've been hearing that this is doing so well that they might actually continue the Spider verse that they're trying to do over here. I would say this might be the best of the lot for me, and that includes the Spider Man movies, because I fucking hated those things. Man, oh God, could not stand those and I'm so glad that they're not coming out with any more of those. I don't care what happened to Peter Parker's parents. I don't care about the Sinister six.
Oh you're talking about the Andrew Garfield stuff.
Yeah, okay, because that's all part of this, right, This is all Sony Like. That was Sony's oh we're going we got to make a Spider Man movie or else we'll lose the.
Right time part of the MCU.
This is the Sony verse.
It is the Sony verse, Mike, But I think, but it is the mc Once the MCU got a hold of Spider Man, I think Sony was doing a wait and see kind of thing. By then, they had released Andrew Garfield, and I think they thought they were going to have a trading situation where they were going to get Tom harl Holland every other movie instead of five movies in a row for Marvel.
Right, yeah, which would be fine. It is just so strange to go about this through the villains rather than through the heroes and put together this whole collection of villains, because you're right, it's odd that Craven is a hero in this, and I don't know what's going to suddenly turn him into a villain other than his intense fear of spiders.
I suppose, yeah, that was spiders that look like men.
That's an next logical step of his prenatory fear that is somehow genetically passed down by his insane mother.
Yes, the fear that his mother had is the same fear that he has too, which okay, But yeah, I didn't mind this one at all. If anything, I was like, Okay, I can see myself watching this again, no problem. It's like those first two Venom films, especially the first one. I wouldn't go back to Kurmage, but the first Venom film I've watched quite a few times. I think this is Heads and Shoulders above Madame Webb. That was just
the shit show. Horrible acting, horrible everything, just the way that the whole story was put together was really bad. Still don't know why it needed to be a period piece other than that Madame Webb is super old in the Convicts and we need to just set this back in that free Peter Parker being born eighties kind of thing. I don't know, but yeah, I've enjoyed it. I was really glad to see Alessandro Nivola. I kept watching him
through the whole movie, going is that Pollax Troy? That looks like Pollax Troy and just that low talking that he did as Alexi's whatever rhino. I was like, Okay, yeah, this is pretty cool. The Foreigner, I don't know. He was just more of an annoyance to me than anything. But was it no kay villain? And I was glad when he died. I applauded when he died.
Yeah, they needed the foreigner. See what we're talking about here is Sony owning everything that came out of the Spider Man books. Basically, if it originated there, they get to use it. Unfortunately, there's only like one decent hero to emerge from Spider Man, and that's fucking Spider Man. So they're left with these villains. And I think it's a good idea to give us these spinoff I want to see a Sinaster six movie. And it's really easy to do that. You just make a villain worse than them.
Bob's your uncle. But they have to be villains to begin with, or what's the fucking point of this, because we're not gonna buy the turn when they have to finally turn against Spider Man, they're gonna have to concoc some bullshit like they're fucking mystically controlled or some nonsense. But I can't see this Craven, no matter how badly he fears whatever, going after Spider Man the way he does in the books.
They reminded me a lot of the Scorpion King. When I watched that movie, I'm like, how is he the bad guy? And the Mummy returns. When we were walking out of the movie theater, we saw the poster for the movie and it says villains aren't born there made. And yes, Craven is a villain, but not in this movie. Craven is a villa, but not in this telling of the story. The worst sin of this movie is the fact that it does not understand the character of Craven
at all. It has taken the character of Craven and done something to him that I think is Wolverine esque, is what it feels like, Oh, we don't have access to Wolverine, so we'll just make a Wolverine movie with
how Wolverine. And that's what it reminded me of, Like an R rated like Logan essentially, but you know if Logan was made by less capable people, though I'm not sure I would put James Mangold in a camp of capable people, given the amazing work he turned in with such classics like Dial of Destiny.
It's better than X Men Origin's Wolverine.
Oh boy, yeah, that's.
That is the damningest of faint praise.
Well, it's still a better movie than that.
I agree with you there.
Yeah, I would actually wouldn't mind seeing a sequel to this to see how Craven goes after his brother. And I was glad the way that they slow built Chameleon. I mean they handed it too. Is at one point when he's singing like Tony Bennett and his dad's oh he's a chameleon, and I was like, okay, the whole Russian thing, and I'm so glad that they were like, oh yeah, these kids were raised in America, so it doesn't have to be Aaron Taylor Johnson putting on his whole Socovian accent.
Is it a Quicksilver again?
Oh my god. I was just like, please, no, I don't need that, because Age of Ultron, for me is one of the worst Marvel films that has been made, just because they didn't understand what the hell to do with that thing. But once he started to speak with an American accent, I was like, oh, thank god, I'm much happier.
Yeah, and speaking to the James Bond of it all, whenever his name got mentioned, I thought that's a terrible idea. Honestly, watching this movie, I thought, oh no, I get it. I think I could see him as it. Yeah, same thing.
I said the exact same thing with Chris yesterday, especially when he's all dappered up and in London he's got a brother's jacket on. I'm just like, look at this dapper motherfucker. This guy could be Bond.
And you mentioned like the family thing where they build in that we get the chameleon by the end. I would like a sequel that did feel natural. I enjoyed the dynamics in this family, all the while dealing with the external threat, which is ostensibly Navola as the Rhino. The effects for Rhino are a little bit ropey, not that great during that final sequence, but I gotta say it reminded me that as a child, I religiously watched
that Spider Man cartoon. That's the Spider Man, that's where that where that song came from, and the Rhino was always my favorite character. I just thought he was the fucking coolest. So I like that we got him and it wasn't a giant fucking robot with Paul Jabbadi inside him.
Doing a horrible Russian accent in.
That role whoa over the top, over the planet.
Yeah. It was interesting that they name checked Miles Warren and I was just like, oh, man, I know that name. And it took me a little while to realize that he was the Jackal, and I was like, oh fuck, are they going to build in the clone story to this thing? I hope not, because that's probably the worst thing that ever happened to Spider Man was the whole idea of him Riley, Oh yeah, Ben Riley. And because there's more than just him, right, aren't there more? Clones of Spider Man. Oh Jesus.
But I gotta say teasing the Jackal was pretty cool at having him be like a genetic splicing kind of a guy, because, let's face it, most of Spider Man's villains are based on animals, so we might as well have someone pulling all those strings.
But also, is so much better that Rhino is a genetic thing. And I like the whole the medicine that keeps him from transforming and talking about pain that it causes when he transforms a little bit smarter than the original Rhino, who I think was what just he got stuck in the suit. Something happened and he's never going to leave that suit. And I'm like, man, that.
Suit's gotta stink exactly like black masks. Yes, there is shirt gall at that point.
When it came to Alessandro Navola, who I think he's a great actor. Jurassic Park three, Come on. He also played Michael Imperioli's father in The Many Saints of Newark, the Soprano's prequel. He's good. I wish they gave him more to do because it seems like they gave most of everything to Russell Crowe.
It's Russell Crowe and everything to do.
Yeah, like Russell crow is it just mirrored? Does it feel like we've gotten a glut of things with Russell Crowe in them all of a sudden.
Yeah, Oh yeah, glad either two noes.
There's that Netflix movie where he's like a psycho like driver that's supposedly pretty good. And then he was in the Exorcism, and then he was in that was the Exorcism, and then the other one was The Excers Post Extorsis, which was a hoot by the way, which is great. Yeah, The Pope's Exorcist was a lot of fun. I'm super excited to see a sequel to that movie. Russell krop
steals the show. And that's too bad because again, to go back to what I was saying earlier, like Aaron Taylor Johnson is just one of those actors I don't get. I haven't understood it since Godzilla. I got it when he was playing kick Ass. He was in Shanghai Knights as Charlie Chaplin many moons ago, like many moons ago. Yeah, he played child Charlie Chaplin in Shanghai Knights. That was like one of his first acting roles. He was like
a child. I just for me, he's like Sam Worthington and Joel Kinneman.
Like Joel Kinneman. Do not compare them to that other f.
Okay has this Sam Worthington, Jay Courtney.
Yeah, I get those two being lumped into the same category. And I see Aaron Taylor Johnson, depending on the role, falling into that as well. But at the same time, you mentioned a couple where he's good, and I think he's really good here.
Yeah, yeah, I think he's really good in Bullet Train. I really like him in that one. I'm curious to see him in this Nosferato. He's supposed to be in that as well. And he was okay in The King's Men as well. King's Man Sorry, and apparently he was in Tenant, but I have pretty much no memory of that movie, which I'm really glad for because that was so awful.
Can I mention one weird thing in this movie? The movie starts with a prison break sequence, and like in a Gulac, but.
I kept waiting for what's his name from the Crimson Commando. I kept thinking of the prison break scene in Black Widow. I was just like, oh.
Right, But while the production logos are going and what is effectively the credit sequence the theme music from The Hunt for Red October.
Is plus Yes, thank you. Andrew was like what is that music? And I was like, and sleep shall bring new holes.
I was an usher at a movie theater playing The Hunt for Red ac I know that music. Intimately, that's a wonderful.
Wonder in the end of the movie. Yeah, oh yeah, it's so good. And yeah when that music comes up. Oh, it was a great movie to clean the theater too.
Absolutely, it was so this movie starts and I'm like what, No, and yet I get it. It's like a it's a Columbia or Sony property, so they can get away with it. But could just use the Russian national anth just use any dunt. That was weird. It was a weird way to start.
Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I had totally forgotten about it. But yes, as soon as that music started, I was like, I know this, and yeah, I anders what is this? This is familiar to me? Yeah, that was wild.
And yeah.
I just kept thinking of all the prison break movies, but especially thinking of Black Widow breaking her father out of prison. I was just like, is he in that same jail or because there was also a prison break in one of the Mission Impossibles that I think was also in a Russian prison, and I was like, all right, waiting for okay, open this door, open up this door. But instead, as soon as he starts like crawling around on the walls, I was like, Oh, okay, this guy.
It's not just strength, it's also this crawling and jumping ability. All right. I guess that stuff that Calypso gives him as almost like super soldier serum.
So clearly defined where his superpower is in this movie, right.
I think they seem pretty defined. Actually, he doesn't necessarily commune with animals, but he has their powers and can catch their drift. He's also super strength and super agility.
Yeah, very bastmaster. I kept waiting for There's one part where the hawk is tapping on the glass window and I was just like, Oh, he's going to see through the hawk's eyes, but no, he doesn't.
In the comic, that serum that Calypso gives him is basically like a super soldier serum like the Wakandan herb, but here they use it like resurrection juice. Yeah, and it has a side effect of the strength and the connection to name.
Yeah, I found it interesting the way that they did the opening and then going back in time and showing his original story and speaking of Russell Crowe, there are a couple of times, like when the lion attacks him and is carrying him across the savannah, there's a shot where his hand is hanging and it's like brushing all of this, all this fauna, and I just kept thinking of that shot of Russell Crowe when he's touching the heads of the stalks of wheat, and I was like,
I wonder if they're doing this as a little homage to Russell Crowe. I had, Yeah, a little gladiator.
Violence in this movie. There's a particular sequence where he's taking out all of Rhino's men in the forest, which is incredibly bloody and fantastic. Honestly, it's a very rambo
section of this movie. And not to hammer this, but we're gonna have him acting this way, but we're not going to make him a villa, make him just can't you just give him like a diet danger diabolic kind of thing where he just gets off breaking the rules, Like, just make him wanted for something other than doing something noble, because when we start this movie, he's got a list like he's Green Arrow or something like taking out like
all these criminals. Basically, what they've done is turn Craven the Hunter into Craven the Punisher.
Here's dexter adjacent. He only kills bad people.
Yeah.
I was actually thinking of the Punisher because I didn't dive into this area of the mythos. But when the foreigners like, oh, he killed my mentor and he holds up a copy just happens to have a copy of The Daily Bugle with him and it's what Hunter kills Hitman or something, and I was like, who is that? Is that the Punisher? Who could that be? So I didn't go back into the Wikipedia to find that one out.
Yeah, that one's lost on me too. But oh, thank god we got the Daily Bugle and every one of these God, oh don't forget this is a Spider Man movie, folks.
At least they didn't have baby spider Man.
Yeah, this one felt them most in universe with those Andrew Garfields to me as far as oh there could be a Spider Man in this universe.
Yeah, this one felt the most realized of any of them. It seemed to know where it stood in relation to the other movies and what it had to give, whereas Venom it seemed and I think that from what I read, the producers were always like, this is standalone stuff. Yes, it shows the universe, but not really. I don't think they were ever looking to build anything on anything with those other movies. They were hoping with Morbius, but Jesus Christ would a fiasco, and then Madam Weaponist.
Spider Noir the TV show. Sorry, Nicholas Cage, I'm looking forward to it, but it's part of this. That's technically the last entry in all of this, because that's coming out I think next year.
I believe that's part of Into the Spider Verse.
Right, Well, technically so is this isn't it?
No?
But into the Spider Verse sort of stands outside of everything because all of the different franchises can be found than there. So that's its own deal.
I don't fucking know anymore. How's that given the MCU of it all, they wanted all, they wanted all to be part of everything all the time.
They wanted their own universe where they kept all the profits, and they wanted Marvel to do all the work for them. I mean that was the deal, right. Initially they put up all the financing and Marvel got five percent of the gross and kept the merchandising. And then in twenty nineteen when they had to renegotiate, Marvel wanted fifty percent of the gross. And that's when Sony was like, fuck you, we'll make our own Spider Man movies now, and Tom
Holland brought them back to the table. And then now what happens is Marvel pays for twenty five percent of the production budget and takes twenty five percent of the profit and has kept the merchandising rights.
It's pretty smart.
Remember when they made a Cloak and Dagger? What was that a TV show?
And Humans TV show?
Oh, I sure remember that one.
And then they literally referenced it in fucking Doctor Strange of all things.
Yeah, remember that New Mutants movie.
Really mine, this is in that same vein, right, It's just like it's a weird anomaly that stands out as its own thing when we're like the look, I have my issues with the MCU, but for fuck's sake, this makes the problems that the MCU is having look minor comparatively.
I agree with you, Mike. I'll go one further. I think this one actually could have fallen. If you were to tell me this was part of the MCU, I would buy it and was wondering how they were going to tie it in. We've all got superhero fatigue these days, and the problem with it, the reason we have it. We're all fucking pointing our fingers at Marvel. It's really because of fucking Sony releasing poor effort after poor effort, along with DC not knowing what the fuck they're doing
over there. And on top of that, we had twentieth Century Fox fucking shit up at least until what twenty twelve or so. Oh god, yeah, yeah, obviously we're gonna burn out. They just keep giving us bullshit.
No, you're one hundred percent right, because they were so many clunkers amongst all of those in the last twelve fifteen years, it's been really fucking rough. Maybe the Suicide Squad is the one that I appreciate from that, and that's probably because of fucking James Gunn where it just becomes a Guardians of the Galaxy on Earth type of thing, And yeah, it's I don't know, I could see this fitting into the regular MCU because I was of the opinion that this kind of fits with their style a
lot more. And I could see now this Craven, I would actually see him teaming up with Tom Holland rather than going against him. But yeah, I agree that this is more of a quality than Sony has given us in a long damn time when it comes to these, and yeah, way better than some of those fucking X Men movies that they're doing.
For a while.
They're x Men two one of the best, but x Men three one of the worst. They just vacillated like crazy. It was like being throttled whenever you went to see one of those X Men films.
I could see this being a Netflix thing. That's what I can see this being. To mention, like Father Malone, you already mentioned The Punisher, that was a Netflix thing technically part of the MCU. It was it's its own thing, but it's part of the MCU. There's a lot of violence in Gore in that. I do not disagree with you all. In terms of this version of Craven working
in the MCU. I think he would work just fine, given that they have to figure out a way to make Deadpool work at this point, and I don't think that this character is any more or less hard to handle or get a wrangle on than Deadpool would be to put in the MCU. I don't think he's gonna be in the MCU, but I don't think that they're gonna do anything with Craven in the MCU. Anyways.
It's going to be real awkward when the Scarlet Witch sees Craven and as, you look just like my dead brother, right, And it's going to be real awkward if we ever see Paul Gmio in that mechanical suit, because Craven's going to be like, didn't I fight you already? Weren't you a mutant before or some sort of genetic hybrid.
And on his way to the afterlife, Nikolai cravenof might run into Zeus.
Exactly and be like, you look just like Craven's dad.
The stars were so many they seemed to overlap.
I guess my question to y'all is given that this is the end of the Sony Spider Verse as it were in terms of theatrical releases, and you've already touched on it a little bit. Mike. This in the top third, and if it is in the top third, is that just because everything else is so bad as well? This movie didn't have very far to go, it'd be better than everything else, Madam Webb. Is an affront to most cinematic good taste. The Venom movies. You're gonna your mile
edge will vary. I would go as far as to say, I think I enjoyed all of the Vena movies more than I enjoyed this movie. But for me, is this good on its own? Or is it just good because everything else that we've seen up to this point has been so mediocre to outright bad.
I liked it on its own?
Okay, Yeah, I think I'm there. I think I'm there with you. Like I said, I can really see myself watching this again. I can see this going onto my wife's plex playlist that she just repeats constantly and being like, Okay, I'm alright with this a lot more than things like you already mentioned Aaron Taylor Johnson and Godzilla that one ooh man, oh man. That was That's a rough one.
Yeah.
I just he for me is an actor that I'm just not super into in what he does. It just kind of always falls flat. And when they when they announced that he was going to be Craven, I was like, okay, like all right, Like he's already played a character in the MCU. We couldn't have found somebody else to play Craven, And clearly the MCU has no interest in doing anything
with Craven. So that's probably for me, the biggest shame is that we may never get Craven in the actual MCU the way he should because to both of y'all's points, he's a huge part of the Spider Man mythos. He's constantly hunting Spider Man.
And his brother the Chameleon, was the first villain in Spider Man one.
Yeah, So for me, it's just it's almost like they let the cat out of the bag, like they should have let the MCU do Craven, just like they probably should have let the MCU do Venom.
Yeah, but they're going to eventually, that's the thing. Eventually we'll just somehow get all the right back and then we'll get the other versions, including I'm now looking forward to the MCU's version of Craven because we're going to get the fucking psychopath Hunter who is all braggadoccio and will hunt anything as just to prove that he can fucking do it, including villains, including heroes, including women, children who cares.
Yeah, that's the thing is I picture Craven as a much more blood thirsty, crazy guy, and this one I'm like, oh no, he seems like a preing, nice dude. And especially the way he's protecting the animals and stuff, I was like, Oh yeah, if this guy is just all about taking down poachers, let's do it.
I'm here for it, and let's stop across the board. Do not tease a comic accurate outfit that you're going to show us for two seconds. Stop doing, because that's how what the entire time I kept thinking, like, when they announced that he was coming, I'm like, they're gonna do a Craven movie. Are they going to put him in that fucking vest? Because that could be weird? And then at the end of this movie, I'm like, yeah, I like it. Go I want to see him running around in that shit.
And they did the same thing that Fox did with Wolverine. They were like, oh, it would look dumb. It's like what a No, people popped like crazy and dead pull Wolverine for when Wolverine put his like mask, the yellow suit. Yeah, people went ape shit for that. Hey, I'm sorry, but if you're going to have him on your poster wearing it, you can't just show it in the last thirty seconds
of the movie. That's pretty lame. Like all the advertising has him in that in the iconic lion vest and it's oh, we're just gonna show him sitting in his throne at the end of the movie. Okay, that felt so unearned, and the movie was like, see he's craven.
Now.
No, I don't think so.
I think it was totally earned. I'm just mad that they keep doing that in all the bullshit movies, and then when they finally get one right, I'm like, oh, no, I don't ever get to see him do that. I don't ever see him running around and throwing a spear in the middle of New York City with the fucking lion vest on. Mm hmm, come on, now.
That's the thing.
For me.
I would have preferred it to be more accurate to the comic book. But again, then you, I guess you run into the issue up it looking and seeming silly.
The thing that all the fans were clamoring for that. Craven's most famous book occurred in the middle of the nineteen eighties, and that's Craven's Last Hunt, where he has determined that he will go all out to kill Spider Man and he believes he does it. He buries Spider Man in this concrete coffin, and then having completed his task, he goes and kills himself, and then that's the end of Craven as a character. I don't know why fans were hoping that would be this ad amtmation. It seems
a little self defeating. I want to see that story. And if they had known that this was going to be the last, then I would have suggested that they go for it, but clearly they thought they were going to continue. Nevertheless, that does leave the door open for the Marvel Universe to do that story. They could do Craven as a one off and have him be a villain who ends up killing himself. I'd be totally satisfied with that.
He killed Spider Man. You mean Spider Man's dead?
He is many years now?
Oh wow? Is his clone still alive?
No?
But we got Miles, Yes, we need to have Miles Morales.
Thank goodness.
With a movie like this and so many of these other non MCU but Marvel things, they are fighting an uphill battle because the MCU, for the longest time, set the bar very high and was essentially like the high water mark of these kinds of things. Now that the MCU has faltered a little bit and it's going back on the way that they've done things, I look at something like this and think to myself, Okay, so you
did this. You just made this movie, underperformed, You're not doing anything else with it, Like, why did we do this in the first place. It's just for the continuation of the rights. It's just to hold down the right, I'm assuming is what it seems like, because again, nobody was clamoring for a Craven movie, just like nobody was clamoring for a aunt May movie that they had talked about making for the longest time. Remember that was one of the things that they were like, we're gonna make
a movie about aunt May. And it's like why did Yeah, they sure said that's gonna happen. It's who wanted that? And look to your point, father Malone, I would say, in terms of villains, Batman has the best villains in DC, and I think Spider Man has the best villains in Marvel.
Is that right?
Do you think I think he's If he doesn't have the best, he's up near the top.
Yeah, I think he might be right. Spider Man does have the most outrageous Rose Gallery.
Electro, Venom, Carnage, Scorpion, Craven, Unasure, technically.
Octopus Octopus behind I.
Mean the Green Goblin alone. The Fantastic Four has Doctor Doom and they have their people, and Wolverine and the X Men have Magneto and their people. But I think, for me, when I think of Spider Man, I think of Spider Man's like the Sinister Six, like his rogues gallery of villains reminds me of the best of Batman's villains, and like to both of y'all's points, like, I don't think doing a Sinister Six thing was a bad idea.
I think they probably should have just done that, though, as opposed to trying to make this Sideways universe its own thing and then we'll make a Sinister Six movie, which is what I was assuming the plan was here in all this was to make a movie that had Madame Web and Venom and carnage and more bious and craven and all them together in a movie. That's what I'm assuming that this was eventually building towards. We are not getting that now, so we will never know what
they were going for. But it for me is just again, it almost feels like it failed in spite of the fact that it was trying to do something different from the MCU. But because the MCU has set the watermarks so high, we all expect quality, and when it's this differential of quality between the two, you can't help us just look at this and go like, why did we even make this? Why are we not just letting the MCU do this.
What's crazy is that they all tried to ape the MCU, or to go so far in the other direction that it became unintelligible. They had a chance here, because they were locked into only doing villains to tell an entirely different kind of comic book story on screen that we could have gotten behind villainous behavior, or they could have made horror movies or thrillers with these. They could have gone in any direction they wanted as far afield from what Marvel was doing as possible and just make good
movies of those, and it would have invigorated the genre. Instead, we just got carbon copies of carbon copies.
Yeah, remember the way that they shoehorned Vulture into the end of Morbius in that scene. It also is very telling with this movie because I used that run p app to see if there's extra scenes no extra scenes in this movie, and I was like, Oh, did they know that this was the end? I don't think they did, but it felt very odd that they weren't going to use those mid and post credits as any sort of setup for play. Don Yes, the green goblin that looked like you had an unfortunate disease.
Yeah, that's what we want from that character, right, give us a goblin face or give us a helmet, don't try and fuck around in between.
I'm just looking at all the members of the Sinister Six and all of the different incarnations. It's pretty remarkable. But you're right, Chris, there are a lot of great villains for Spider Man to go against. Just looking at the later recruits with like Beetle and Shocker and Grim Reaper and Lizard and Living Brain. There's a ton of great people that he could go against at any time. Evidently Craven was going to be the backup villain for Mysterio and Spider Man Far from Home, but they were
denied the right to use the character. Ultimately, they tried to use him again some other time and were told they couldn't use him. It still doesn't make any sense that they used Electro in that last Spider Man movie, because he doesn't know who Peter Parker is, or doesn't know that Spider Man is Peter Parker, at least according to their own fucking movie.
Yeah, there was a lot of problems with the timelines in that movie and the melding of the different world. I think they did a pretty good job considering all of the different balls they had to get into the air.
But yeah, a lot to be desired. Maybe work on that script another six months, right, another two three passes, which seems to be a common refrain when we talk about these newer films, especially things like Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice or some of the other ones that we've said, you waited this long, Why didn't you wait just a little bit longer and make it better. Yeah, they've waited twenty thirty years in some cases, and they're like, okay, and now
here's the release date, go make the movie. Like yeah, why is the money dependent on that date? What kind of outdated system is that the problem?
Now?
The system is just now fully broken where we can see all of the flaws, and it gives me a bit of heart that I feel a bit heartened in that James Gunn has been hammering over and over again, we're not starting the movie until the script is ready. That's great, Please do that, but make sure the script is actually good.
I will say, though, now that this is over, now that this Spider Versus done, where do they go from here? Do they just does Sony just give the rights back to Marvel and say, here you go, Mia Kolpa, we fucked around and found out long enough. Maybe you guys can have the rights back and we'll just sell it to you for large sums of money, like they should have just done long ago, as opposed to effectively getting egg on their face with six movies. That's the thing
I don't understand here. As much as I appreciate that y'all enjoyed this movie broadly, this movie is getting poorly reviewed broadly. This movie is making no money broadly, this movie is a failure in terms of box office, in terms of the financial side of it. Just speaking financially, none of these movies have been successful other than the Venom movie. That's what I don't understand here. The sunk cost fallacy is a thing. Stop putting more money into
the fucking at some point. It's weird to me. Venom is a movie that I understand why it got two sequels. It got two sequels because it made money. I don't understand why they made Madame Web and Morbius and this movie because they ultimately serve no purpose. Morbius goes nowhere and frankly all it does is convolute the multiverse more. And Madame Web again, I'm not sure what the point of that movie was other than to pay for a
home in Malibu for Dakota Johnson. I'm assuming as if she needs the money, given that her parents are both insanely wealthy and also actors of note in their own right. I just don't understand what they were trying to accomplish here without Spider Man. I think, to y'all's point, maybe it was a maybe we'll get Spider Man at some point and Marvel will play ball with us, and we'll get the opportunity to use Spider Man in our movies
at some point. But yeah, you had to make good movies for Marvel to give you the opportunity to have Spider Man, and they never did. And what's crazy to me is JC Chandor has made some pretty great movies. A Most Violent Year is quite good, Margin Cole is quite good. Those are quite good movies. This is for JC Chandor. This is a lesser movie in his filmography on top of everything else. But what's weird to me is I just don't understand why they kept making these
movies when they saw that they weren't being successful. And to further point, if they saw they weren't being successful, why did they keep making them unless it was solely and purely to just be like, we want to keep the rights to this, and so we will.
You asked where Sony's going to go with this afterwards, and I think they're going to go back and hire Sam Raimi and have him do his fourth Spider Man film with Tommy maguire. I think that's a good opportunity. Otherwise, yeah, they might just hand it all back and be like, Okay, it's Tom Holland from sure out until he decides to retire from this role, which would be a really bad thing. I think Robert Downey Junior is having buyer's remorse with his like, oh, I'm not going to be Iron Man
anymore coming back and doing Doom. But at the same time, they probably had an army of dump trucks to just back up and pour some money on him, because I think they know just losing Downey, losing for Evans like those were major blows. They really shouldn't have been. A smart studio would have been able to pick up and carry on from there, but I think the lack of those two characters had really sent them in a tailspin.
They did too good of a job and making those characters compelling, and they didn't do a good enough job and making other characters compelling. I know Father Malone's a huge fan of Captain America. I am a massive fan of some of the other characters in the MCU, but
I'm fans of the MCU interpretations. Not necessarily. The comic books and the movie interpretation of ant Man are vast different, but Iron Man and Captain America very similar to the comic books very much what you would expect if you read the comic books, at least of a certain time in a place. And I think that there's some of the consistency that the MCU had was tied to the
consistency of the actors involved. And I'm not saying that people are lesser or better than Chris Evans and Robert Downey Junior, but Chris Evans and Robert Downey Junior elevate the shit out of anything that they're in, almost just by the sheer fact of them being in it. Maybe not doo little, but not everything can be making you so much money you never have to work again, and are only working because you want to, not because you have to.
I think it's obvious they thought that they were going to be trading back and forth with Tom Holland, and that they were hitting these characters, and then after a while Tom Holland would be able to interact with their villains the way he was interacting with the regular MCU villains. I think they just planned a whole bunch of movies just willing nilly and put them into production without any sort of thought beyond that, figuring that when Tom Holland
was involved. The Marvel people would be involved in one way or another, and they their movies would be elevated. So I think that's why all of them are out there. I think going forward, I think you're right, Mike. I think we're going to get either another Andrew Garfield or
another Toby MacGuire movie. And I think the way that's going to happen is they're going to multiverse Tom Holland over to get us back into those movies, and that'll be like Marvel repaying their favor, if not an entire three or two, like a duo of Spider Man in a movie. I think that movie's on the way, and then I think we'll get like standalone either Peter Parker or Peter Parker.
The thing I like about the Spider Man movies and the Spider Man stories is that they're New York centric. Yes, we've had Tom Holland going over seas and going to Washington, DC, like they're taking place outside of New York City. But I like that they're so New York centric and they're smaller stories that it doesn't have to be the world is going to be destroyed by a magical blue beam that shoots out of someplace or beams down from someplace save that stuff for the Avengers, and they do, and
I think that's really smart. And I think that's one of the problems I've been having more with the DC movies is that everything seems to be the world could end. Like Batman's stories are smart, especially the Chris Nolan Batman, where it's it's just taking place here in Gotham, it's
not affecting the entire world. But then you get Superman and those are like, oh, I'm going to destroy all of Metropolis plus three quarters of the earth that feels like and he's spinning around, you know, And that's Superman. He's a god. He can do whatever he wants. But Spider Man's not a god. And I like that these are such smaller stories where it's like a person versus
a villain or two. You get in trouble and it's three, but a person versus a villain or two that he can defeat, but it takes a whole lot for him to do that.
Ultimately, Spider is a street level hero for Marvel, and that's what we like about him. That's why we like Punisher, that's why we like Daredevil. We like these guys on the street doing minor work that regular people can't but isn't necessarily the entire island of Manhattan is going to explode. And I think that's what everyone needs to start focusing on with these superhero movies is lower the stakes, make the stakes more personal. Somehow. That always works for me,
and particularly that works in Spider Man. That's what's always work. Those are emotional stories about a young man and the crazy world he lives in, in his interpersonal relationships and stuff. Weirdly, they carried that ethos here to the Craven movie.
Yeah, even though he was globhopping quite a bit, like back and forth between Siberia and London, A ton By and Ghana.
Yes, they just didn't want Craven to be a villain. No, they wanted him because they don't have Spider Man.
Right, and I think by now they figured out we're not getting man. He's not going to be interacting with our villains. Let's try and spin this and make it good. But it was too little, too late.
And not only is it too little too late, at the end of the day, they should have put something in place to secure the opportunity to have Spider Man long before they were like, well, just wait and see, and you fucked around and found out like big time. Because again, that's why I go back to they just kept making these movies and doubling and tripling and quadrupling down on them, and it's at what point are we just going to stop and stop making these goddamn movies?
Finally now apparently when again I think to y'all's point, like, for as much as I didn't like Craven, I will concede it's better than pretty much anything else I've seen in the Sony versus, other than the Venom movies, which are their own thing, at least for me.
Anyways.
Yeah, they just kept setting that plate going around like all right, everybody's got the rolls, everyone's got salad or coming to the main courses, coming up. Peter Parker was supposed to bring it. Where's this Peter Parker guy? No turkey on Thanksgiving? Sorry, guys, the whole meal is now ruined.
And Peter Parker's usually good at those males. So oh yeah, yeah, it's definitely damming and.
And male slap the green Goblin's hand. Yeah, from my mouth to God's ear, I hope that's what.
Honest to God, that's what I hope too. I hope that they'd give him the opportunity to do a fourth movie the right way and just do it, like who cares at this point, Like people were clearly into Toby maguire coming back as Spider Man. It wasn't just us, like millennials and gen xers, like everybody was into it. So again, I don't know why Sony doesn't want to play ball with Marvel. Shut the fuck up, give him the fucking rights, and let's just be done with it.
You guys suck at making Spider Man movies. You just do because you can't even make Spider Man movies. That's why they suck at making Spider Man movies, because they have yet to actually make a motherfucking Spider Man movie. They've just been like gingly related and we'll mention Spider
Man's name. Wow, that's fun. Does that embarrass you as much as I'm embarrassed for you, because I'm embarrassed for Sony when they're like, ah, spider Man, get it, and we know we've heard of Spider Man, like we're aware of Spider Man, very clearly aware of spider Man.
Thank you?
Are you aware of my boyfriend spider Man? He lives in Canada, so bizarre to me. All right, let's wrap up this discussion of craving the Hunter by going around the room here father alone, Where can people hear more of you?
Sir? Go over to weirding Way Media and where you'll find my show Midnight Viewing, where these two gentlemen are co hosts for our horror anthology podcast. We're taking a look at Tales from the dark Side. But Midnight Viewing is also a current show. I do a weekly round up show, and there's also a show about anthology movies in general. That's all under the Midnight Viewing banner. I suggest you all't go there.
By them alone almost puts me into shame with the amount of work that he does, which is heads and tails above what Chris Dashy does, which is clearly next to nothing. Chris, tell the fine people what you're working on these days?
Essentially nothing. I've been working on myself the last five months, and I occasionally post audio diversions over at weirdingwaymedia dot com, where you're probably listening to this, and if you aren't listening to it, there, go to Weirdingwaymedia dot com and check out the twenty plus shows that we have on the network, including the Projection Booths, Midnight Viewing, adestv ladies, whole host of things that you can find over weirdingwaymedia dot com.
What about you, Mike, Chris, You're being very falsely modest. Chris works on a ton of stuff, usually with me, sometimes with father alone, and sometimes on his own or with other folks, so you can always check out some of the things that we work on, such as The Shabby Detective. You had another podcast, The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller, as well as, yes, the Projection Booth,
where Chris occasionally shows up. We just had him recently on an episode I'll about Kamikaze eighty nine, which was a lot of fun and I'm excited for people to hear that one. So yeah, come on over to Weirdway Media dot com to hear all that. Please make a donation if you donate to my patreon or Chris's Patreon, you can get at the ten dollars leveling up. You can get copies of ranking on Bond, which is our monthly James Bond podcast, and father Malone has a Patreon
as well, which is patreon dot com. Slash bother alone perfect makes a lot of sense to me. Thanks guys, and thanks everybody for listening.
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