Entertainment

Race.

/ toseealife / 4 Comments

So, it’s black history month and I actually did watch a documentary type film about an important black historical figure. So, let’s talk about it.

I happen to like movies of this sort. Hidden Figures, The Help (not a documentary,) and other films of that sort ar really interesting stories.

But it’s only fair to say they have an agenda.

I have no problem with representing the struggles men and women of a certain race went through, when those struggles actually happened. But these movies very often “stretch the truth” about some of the characters.

There was real adversity I have no doubt, but often racism is best expressed in subtlety. I think these movies tend to make it too blatant. It’s actually more maddening to me when racism is a subtle thing because it’s so hard to pinpoint and remedy.

That being said, this movie wasn’t the worst of offenders in that area. It helped that a lot of the problems of the movie centered on the Germans and their ideas. Which cannot be denied since they were documented. And we know the Germans were pretty blatant about it

Funny isn’t it, a nation advancing in technology and athletics subsequently falls into the rut of racism, which America was just beginning to climb out of.

Never tell me racism is the result of only ignorance and stupidity. Some people are willingly ignorant.

I spend so much time talking about racism against white people, that I don’t want to seem like I’ve never given a thought to the real racism against blacks (and others.) Believe me, I’ve read the books and gotten mad over the accounts. A lot of shootings happen because of racism. Not always between whites and blacks, often it’s between Hispanics and blacks, but it’s still a problem.

The whole idea of skin color meaning anything when it comes to how smart someone  is is ridiculous.

These are differences to be sure, but not ones of essentials. It’s also not racism to simply be prejudiced against one kind of people.

Not color-based racism anyway. There are more than one kinds. Racism of color is a lot less of a problem now than racism of culture. You can be prejudiced against a people because you have heard or seen a lot of the same traits in them. That’s called stereotyping. But it’s not always negative.

For example, thinking all black people are good at gospel music is a stereotype, and it may be silly to assume that, but it is not racism. Because in no way dos thinking that make you think they are inferior.

Also a common mistake now is that portraying any race of people as happier then they should be is racist, because it denies their suffering. It’s propaganda perhaps, but it doesn’t imply inferiority to that race, therefore it’s not racist.

We tend to lump a bunch of different sins all into the one of racism.

This movie, Race, is interesting and informative in some ways. I just read a book that talked about how the Nazis wanted touse eugenics (the controlling of mating people and animals to get a more perfect race) to make their own sort of Garden of Eden world.

One of the best scenes in this movie was when the German racer, Luz Long, was talking to Jesse Owens, after being a good sport to him about the long jump. Luz told Jesse what was easily the most horrifying thing in the movie, that he believed the Germans in charge of the Olympics had sent a girl to him who wanted to get pregnant by him…because he was so talented, they want to breed his genes.

Jesse, who was concerned about the bigotry had this cool moment of realizing he wasn’t the only one who had problems.

Another part was when Jesse had to replace one of the Jews who were suddenly not allowed to complete because of the Germans bullying the Americans into it. (Not that it was right.) The scene was a lot more compelling then most of the other scenes regarding discrimination against Jesse.

Nothing against Jesse, but let’s be real, we’ve seen the poor, looked down upon black character a hundred times. It’s true maybe, but it’s no longer shocking. It doesn’t move us. because we expect it. In fact we’re spoon fed it from the media so often that it’s almost impossible to feel shocked. Familiarity breeds contempt.

The reason this movie’s brief touch on Jewish aimed racism and the creepy factor of eugenics is brilliant is because it makes you feel something, it makes you think about it. How racism against one people leads to racism against another, and even leads to misusing your own people, like they were animals.

Germans became obsessed with the strong and talented, and grew to hate the weak and ordinary. Even among themselves. Germans hated half wits, now known as special needs cases. They hated most people actually.

I don’t bear any ill will to modern Germans, I don’t even hate the ones who did what they did, I pity them. But this movie provided a much needed reality check on the situation. It’s not just in America, and it’s not limited to people of a certain color.

I would not get on a soapbox and preach tolerance. That’s not the answer. Tolerance will never eliminate hatred. Eventually it fosters it. I think twitter ought to be evidence of that.

All that can eliminate hatred, as Wonder Woman would say, is love.

The kind of love that will stick up for other people, no matter what nationality they are. I hope, though I have not been tested on it yet, that I would stand up for anyone I saw being mistreated.

Whether they were a muslim, an african american, a hispanic, or whatever.

Anyway, check out Race if you can, until next time–Natasha.

Easy A

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Review time again! Yay!

I wish I had picked a better movie to watch today, but Is til have chances to make it up. There’s always Titanic in a pinch, right?

In all honesty the description of this movie sounded better than it was.

In case you’ve never heard of it, Easy A is about a girl who’s friend thinks she’s slept with a college guy, and Olive lies and says she has because her friend is digging for it so much. then a christian girl overhears and spreads the word. Eventually everyone thinks Olive is a slut and a prostitute, and she starts getting paid to say she’s slept with a bunch of different losers. Then one loser actually want her to do it for real, and she is horrified.

In the end she makes a webcast telling the truth about the whole mess, and finds a guy who actually likes her for her. The end.

Ugh….picture me rolling my eyes right now.

The story is supposed to be a retelling of The Scarlet Letter. Which is about a woman who actually had committed adultery, but without realizing it till it was too late, and who ends up pregnant. She gets ostracized, and she ends up embroidering the scarlet letter A, which she is forced to wear, on all her clothes, and when she has her baby she beautifully embroiders her clothes.

She ends up being more sympathetic character.

unlike Olive, who you get frustrated with for continuously lying and giving in to peer pressure over her sexuality. I’m not sure why movies like this continuously portray doing stupid things as somehow daring and indicative of a unique personality. Pretending to have sex with some guy at a party falls under the stupid category in my book…but hey, she did it all the way so…she’s spunky?

Even though Emma stone is hard not to like, in her own sardonic way, she was wasted in this role. By the end of the movie she’s learned nothing. Except that lying about sex is a bad idea.

No one else in the movie has an aha! moment where they change their perspective. And not once is the idea that sex outside of marriage might actually be a bad idea seriously considered.

even though by my count, two people’s reputations and 1 marriage were all ruined over the idea; as well as many others faking their way to popularity.

I don’t want to be petty, but Christians were stereotyped within an inch of our lives, which is what I would expect, because Holly wood forbid that they make us look like rational, compassionate creatures.

Not that all of us are, sadly, but I find it hard to believe any christian teen in public highschool would act the way these ones did. They have more gall then me.

And that parents i this movie were sick. They had no problem with their daughter dressing like a whore, and being labeled as having an STD, and getting detention. (actually on the last one I had to sympathize.) They encouraged her to be promiscuous.

No parent worth their marriage license would react that way. It was so stupid.

In the end Olive concludes that her sex life is none of anyone’s —-business (imagine that!) but she still thinks she might lose her virginity to her new boyfriend. Because clearly that doesn’t lead to any problems.

I mean, duh. What the heck was the point of this movie?

If that’s how much power a rumor had, how much worse to actually do all those things.

even though Olive realizes how disgusting everyone’s obsession with sex is, and that’s a good point right there, she never seems to realize why it got to be that way. Why not having boundaries leads to so many problems. Why if people just honored sex by keeping it in marriage none of the things in the movie would have happened.

And forgive me for getting on my soapbox, but when the movie is making that point without even trying to make it, you know you have an issue.

Really, it missed the whole point of the “source material” which is that sexual promiscuity has consequences, and people can not see the forest for the trees when it comes to one woman’s mistake and their own hypocrisy, but in the end patience and virtue will win out if you practice them diligently.

That’s what the woman in the story did, it is not what Olive did. continuing to make the same dumb mistakes that got you into your problem, and embracing the reputation that ensues, is being stupid. It’s not being brave or noble about it.

Olive admits she had no notion of being either of those things, or being patient and meek. Even if that would have spoken volumes more about her innocence then what she did do.

So basically, this is a what not to do movie that never even really shows why the religious people it was critiquing were so wrong to think they way they did. Weren’t they right? Didn’t it all lead to a lot of bad stuff happening?

Anyway, I don’t recommend this flick, until next time–Natasha.

The Matrix

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I’ll describe the way this movie makes you feel in one word.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?

Seriously, what the heck was that?

I guess this was a hit in the nineties or whenever it came out, but it is so dated.

My idea is that the screenwriter wanted to make a martial arts action thriller, and got stuck with a sci-fi movie instead. The action is quite good, especially for a movie of that decade. It had breakthrough shooting techniques I’ve been told.

But guys, the plot is crud.

I find it hard to discuss this movie rationally because it makes my brain feel dizzy trying to figure it out. If you get it, then good for you, but it does not compute for me.

Which is funny, since everyone in this movie acts like a computer.

I have to hand it to the director, he succeeds it making you feel just how unreal it would be to live in a world of machines run by robots. That’s the experience this movie puts you through for 2 hr+.

You find yourself unable to differentiate the Matrix from the “Real World” as you watch the movie. It’s like it was intentionally made to be confusing.

How can Neo still have superpowers in the second movie when he’s not in the matrix? HOW did he stop those squid things? Why did he go into a coma?

If the Oracle is the enemy why do her prophecies still come true? If she doesn’t control Neo, how can he be subject to the Matrix? IF he is subject to it, how can he fight it? Ahhh!

I’ve only seen the first two movies, and the second one made me so dizzy I don’t know if I can handle another one. The more my sister and I tried to understand it the more our heads spun.

the first one, which is slightly better and easier to follow, and actually made me feel something for a split second there when Trinity kissed Neo. Yay! True love!

In the sequel I couldn’t care less about their relationship because it’s just physical, none of the emotion comes in, even when it’s supposed to. Neo reaching into her heart to restart it…what?

And they kill her in the third one, so what was the point of it all?

If you live in another country and never heard of this or saw it, you didn’t miss anything.

The second movie only improved on the first in its action. I enjoyed some of the scenes where Neo beat the crud out of the other dudes. Though Mr. Smith’s constant appearance got irritating. Die already you freak computer program!

It’s like when you have a glitch in your computer that always trips it up when you don’t want it to.

The meaning (and I use the term loosely) of the Matrix is basically humanism. Cosmic humanism I think. The idea that men have to be independent and can’t rely on something like an oracle or a constructor to fix things.

That man has to break free from the  powers that be and do his own thing to survive.

Even if the world hardly seems worth surviving in when you see it for what it is.

And there’s no afterlife to make it worth doing what’s right.

Now, it’s the second movie that killed the series. The first one didn’t go that far. It actually had valuable moments about faith in it.

And let’s be real, the people who liked the Matrix when it came out liked it because of Morpheus and his undying faith. And Morpheus has quite a lot of profound advice about faith that makes sense to me. I think it’s valuable even outside of a religious context. Stand by your morals, and try to make things better. Who doesn’t like that message?

The first movie did that okay, it was weird, but I didn’t feel like puking when it was over. Now, the second undid all the good things about the first one. Oh, Neo’s a Bruce Lee of computer programs now? Yay! I’m so inspired by someone who can imagine their reality into being reality….what?

I thought they sequel blew its one chance to improve upon the first by making Zion ugly and depressing as heck.

If you want us to feel humanity is worth saving, show us some beauty in humanity. Show us art. Show us family. Any touching moment at all. Please.

But hey Morpheus is in a  love triangle and he gets the girl by the end, so there’s that.

Because obviously we all wanted that.

If this was a modern series, I would be begging for it to go under. As it is I’m amazed anyone watched the second one. I could see them watching the third in the hopes that they would finally find a way to understand this weirdness.

But one interesting thing I can observe for you folks who saw it but don’t watch current teen movies is that ever single dystopian series has been stealing from the Matrix 1 and 2.

The Hunger Games ripped it off, and the Divergent series blatantly did it. I watched the first and third of that series, and while it’s more enjoyable and less confusing then the Matrix, it’s pretty much the same plot. Right down to the main character waking up in a chair after being plugged into a drug induced computer hallucination….yes, they did that.

The real lesson boys and girls is don’t use computers, and don’t do drugs. Because you’ll become part of the system…well, I guess that’s kind of true in some ways…

But trying to pull any real life lesson from the Matrix is impossible because nothing makes enough sense to justify the few things in it that are profound.

Morpheus, the best character, is shown to have been wrong abut everything! And he was the inspiration for all of us… to keep watching. For crying out loud, movie!

Anyway, that’s all I have to say about that. If you’re a millennial who’s curious about why the Matrix keeps getting referenced in new shows and movies, then you guess is as good as mine, but please don’t waste your time by checking it out for yourself.

The movies make more sense if someone explains it to you then it ever will watching it yourself.

Until next time–Natasha.

Titanic

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Let’s take a break from my heavier topics to talk about something we all love:Titanic

Just kidding.

I know not everyone, including myself, loves this movie. But I do think it’s worth discussing even if you hate it’s guts, or if you’re one of those with an undying love for the franchise.

We have to consider why this movie was and is such a hit. Because it tells us a lot about people and what they like, and what they secretly dream about.

I really don’t think the actors or the score are what make or break a movie like titanic. That is, I don’ think good actors guarantee a hit, or a good score. But I do think they sell the plot.

It sounds weird to say you love a movie that it as least one third tragedy, and almost as frustrating as Romeo and Juliet in terms of how differently it could have gone if something had just turned in the couple’s favor.

But, even though when I saw Titanic it was on TV, with commercial breaks, and I was not completely swept up by the romance, I recognized something about the film was entrapping.

I escaped the craze by a few years or many more, so I didn’t have that bias stacked against me when I watched. By the time I saw it there were plenty of haters, but I’d talked to some girls around my age who liked it anyway. But didn’t rave over it.

Titanic was basically the Frozen of adult movies, from what I can gather from those who witnessed the craziness. The difference being adults didn’t have to be as embarrassed about liking it. (Until people turned against it.)

And I’m not going to say it was right or wrong to love Titanic. I will reiterate that I don’t love it personally, but that’s taste on my part. I could easily see how it would hook folks. I do enjoy it in some ways, and I do, still, like the song. (Sue me.) I think it was a well made film.

But the part I found impossible to get out of my head for days was the sinking. It wasn’t actually Rose and Jack’s part in it that moved me (though that’s sad in of itself,) it was the actual tragedy they showed. Stuff that probably really happened. I think the Musicians playing is a recorded fact. So is the line that :God himself couldn’t sink that ship” Someone did say that.

Titanic may be a good romance, depending on your taste, but it’s lasting impression is because it depicts the folly of arrogance and pride. And how they lead people to destroy themselves by being incautious. Titanic, the queen of the fleet, as it were, was brought down by an iceberg just like any common ship could be.

Never reckon without the force of Nature folks. It is God’s territory, and whether God sank the Titanic  personally or not it doesn’t matter. What really sank it was the idiocy of the people aboard. Speeding when they should have slowed. Leaving half the life boats at home when they could have saved hundreds more people. Not letting the poor leave the ship, locking them in steerage.

And the movie makes us feel this, which is important, because you often can’t get that feeling just from reading an emotionless account of the story. We need to learn from our mistakes.

Titanic may not be a great loss of life compared to a War. But it springs from the same source. Neglect, arrogance, leaders misleading people.

Which in the movie is personified by Rose’s ex. Who is a bully and almost a murderer. And a coward.

It’s sad to me when the Captain goes down with the ship in utter despair and shame for what he let happen. And heart rending when the minister is reciting Psalms 23 and desperate people are listening as they wait for death.

By contrast, the fact that Rose and Jack don’t freeze to death after twenty minute in the lower levels of the ship makes me feel less sympathy for them. Because it’s unreal.

But I get it, not everyone cares.

The real point isn’t how real or unreal it is, but what we carry away from it. Thought the romance is nice, I think it’s a mistake to act like that was the only thing in the movie that made people cry. And I doubt it was what made them remember it either.

The romance is the euphoria of it. It’s the reason you watch it again. Because at the end Rose almost seems to beat the tragedy. In her dream (or her death) being reunited with Jack. Literally living the dream we have, that all bad things can be avoided, or turned into something beautiful.

The wish we all have that we could change history, whether or own or the world’s to make it devoid of tragedy.

That’s whey movies like Titanic and the Notebook are popular. It’s not just women’s wish fulfillment, (though men will pretend that it is,) it’s humanity’s wish. Our longing.

And whether you say it’s stupid or not, you’ve felt it at one point. Claim you’re older, wiser, (in reality more cynical,) but you felt it once.

There are those who think Titanic was hit because of its theme of true love conquering all. A christian them, Christians will claim.

It could be. I certainly think Frozen was a hit for that reason.

But, the Bible says the World sees and soon forgets the truth of God. If Christian truth is what makes a movie a smash it at first, it’s not what endures of it for most people.

I don’t call the fanatic obsession with either Titanic or Frozen a godly thing. I don’t think it has anything to do with God, after a certain point, though it might have started that way.

The fact is, people make idols of these stories. They chase the dream that the movie showed them a glimpse of, thinking it came from the movie itself, instead of just being portrayed by it.

Which is why in the end the world or culture turns against the art it once loved, because the art proved empty.

Of course it did, it was never the paint itself that made a portrait good but what the paint made you think of. Which could be done by a charcoal sketch just as effectively.

I am not discrediting the beauty of fine art, I love it. But it’s fine because of the ideals the people painted it with.  It’s the invisible attributes of things that make you love them. Not the visible. IT never lasts forever.

And those are my thoughts on Titanic.

–Natasha.

Racial Stereotypes and Movies.

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You know what I notice when I watch internet reviews? Most of the ones out there are by more…liberal minded youths.

Youths being subjective, some of them are in their thirties.

But they more to the left, if you know what I mean.

I still enjoy their reviews and get something from them, but on certain issues, they always end up disappointing me by taking the opposite stance from what I would.

A common example would be racism in films (by the way it’s a lot easier to see racism in films than in books.)

A lot of the time it’s just pointed out to make a sarcastic joke, and the observation is not based on substantial evidence that the movie was being racist.

Like in old Disney movies.

Maybe, and I say it with reluctance, Walt Disney did have some racist leanings. A lot of people did in the forties and fifties, even those who wouldn’t have identified themselves as for segregation.

But I might point out his movies were probably one of the first, if not the first, to feature ethnic characters in a kid’s film.

Also, I question whether all stereotyping is harmful.

To a kid, the stereotyping is a lot less about color or speech and a lot more about how the character acts. They won’t recognize singing a certain way as a stereotype. They’ll be paying more attention to whether the character is being good or bad.

And that’s why black is associated with evil and white is associated with good.

Before you get all offended (if you’re the type who does.) Let me further explain.

The black vs white thing has nothing to do with race, as much as certain groups of people would like you to believe it does. It’s all about the contrast between darkness and light.

This goes way back to the Bible itself, along with plenty of mythologies around the world. Darkness, night, underground, etc, is always representative of evil.

Which is not a coincidence or a chance but a deep truth. In darkness you are blind and you lose your way. That’s how you become evil. In a nutshell.

But light, daytime, open air, they all represent truth and goodness.

And we all know the connection there. Freedom and seeing things clearly leads to happiness and goodness.

Plus most people are afraid of the dark as children and prefer the daylight hours.

That villains are traditionally clothed in black or other dark colors is not a racist thing, nor are references to things looking blacker than before. Context, people, context.

Black characters are not often cast as villains anyway.

Which is also called racist, but I think the white people ought to be more offended over this.

why are we always portrayed as evil maniacs who lie, kill, steal, as if it were nothing?

And if this doesn’t bother you, but black characters not being villains does, you have a problem.

Because that’s basically saying white people can be evil and it’s normal, but black people can be evil and it’s special. It makes them important.

How messed up is that idea on so many levels?

Furthermore, if old movies portrayed black and Asian characters as goofy, quirky, and stereotypical, were they any better to white characters?

Couldn’t the whole tea party thing from Alice in Wonderland be called an English stereotype? Could the white rabbit who’s always in a hurry and kind of a milksop be a stereotype?

Actually all the characters int eh movie are white and very quirky.

But if that’s not the best example, what aobut the princess movies?

The only non white princesses are also ones portrayed as more proactive and hardworking and anti damsel in distress. (Pocahontas, Tiana, and Jasmine.) You can argue all day about how their ethnicity as a whole is portrayed, but aren’t they less helpless and docile than Cinderella and Snow White and Aurora; all European.

And aren’t all the white princesses up till Merida stereotypically man–oriented without any power of their own?

Merida and Elsa are still the only real exceptions to this so far.

Am I saying we should come down on Disney for all this? NO.

I don’t care.

I really don’t need movie characters to tell me what my gender should do or be. I don’t see little boys walking around being princely. (Too bad.) If I like identifying with princesses, it’s because something in the idea of it itself appeals to me. Not because i think that’s the embodiment of what a woman should be.

I would find that thought ridiculous.

And I don’t ask movies to define femininity for me. Wonder Woman is just as feminine to me as Cinderella. Because woman are different, and what we share is hard to capture in one film.

Saying that Cinderella or Wonder Woman are the peak of womanliness is as silly as trying to pick between a t\super smart guy or the tough wrestler guy as the epitome of manliness.

Doesn’t a man need both brains and brawn? Don’t most men fall between those two extremes. Or in some cases, are both. (Hi Batman….and most Superhero men.)

And don’t most women have both a tough and bold side, and a demure and beauty loving side.

For me those two sides are inseparable. I can be bold and appreciate the finer things in life simultaneously.

And any movie that says those are mutually exclusive is idiotic.

Just like any movie that thinks it can accurate portray an entire ethnicity is idiotic.

Here’s the rub.

People are all different. A movie portraying an ethnicity can only portray the most well known parts of it, or the worst parts, or the funniest parts, to get so many people to follow along.

It’s not a movie’s place to define a race. Only to use race as a storytelling tool.

It can’t tell you what you are, and how you live. It’s not able to do that. And no one should ask it too.

That’s not to excuse any film that’s using stereotypes just to put people down and dump on one culture or another. Those films are garbage.

But most films are just trying to tell the story using what the majority is familiar with. And that’s true whether it’s an american film portraying English stereotypes, or a Bollywood film portraying American stereotypes. (It happens.)

Whatever. Can I just focus on the actual message?

Those are my thoughts anyway, until next time–Natasha.

Spiderman 3

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I know I did talk about this already but at the time I hadn’t seen it yet. Now that I have I want to give you my assessment of all the complaints I’ve heard about it.

My assessment is: THE COMPLAINTS ARE STUPID.

I don’t normally just dismiss all the hate a movie gets as ridiculous, but this time, I am.

Okay, okay, to be fair. It was not perfect.

The only part I thought the criticism of the pacing rung true with was the end.

I thought each villain was set up well, but bringing them all together was too rushed, and though it made for an interesting battle, Venom and Sandman’s partnership wasn’t very intimidating or epic. For me it was more about Harry coming through than either of them.

And Harry’s change of heart was…not bad, no, but rushed.  Again.

I put all this up to superhero films not being allowed to be longer than 2hrs+. I mean, they aren’t 3 hrs long ever.

I would say this movie was written as well (for what it was) as Braveheart or Titanic. But those movies had more time to wrap up all their plot devices, and character arcs. This one set everything up flawlessly, but it couldn’t deliver slowly enough.

But I have no real complaints. The timing thing made it weird, but by no means un-moving. I actually teared up when Harry died.

And yes, Peter as one weird nerd. As MJ even says.

 

You don’t like Peter because he’s some dreamboat, hunky, suave playboy…like Tony Stark. (Sorry.) You like Peter for all the opposite reasons. Because he’s dorky and normal-ish. And a good guy despite how many times his heart gets ripped out. And he’s smart of course. (thought hey really down play that in this trilogy.)

It’s a little weird to me to have so much voice-over, with such blatant message giving in a superhero movie. But I don’t think it’s wrong.

IT’s a stylistic choice, and it doesn’t kill the gravity of the moment.

Spiderman 3 is a comic movie and it’s not wrong for it to play out as such. Even the special affects are way more comic book than sci-fi. But that’s why you love it, if you love it.

And at the end of the day, and the movie, it’s not about all that anyway. It’s about the heart.

Aunt May kicks off the message of this film by talking about revenge and how it eats away at you. Which the space mud is a not so subtle representation of. You may not remember in the scene where it latches on to Peter it forms itself first into a goblin shape, and then into a claw-like hand which  goes for his heart.

Creepy. And exactly what revenge does.

I actually appreciate that the movie isn’t pretending like this is a new idea. It’s not. We all know (or should) that revenge is bad. But we also know that Peter never truly dealt with his revenge against the man in the first film whom he thought killed Uncle Ben, and it’s been a stain on his character (at least for me,) I like that they went back to it instead of repeating it never happened.

Peter never forgave himself or the killer for what happened. Sot his movie is not pulling this plot out of nowhere, but actually addressing what they’ve built up to for a long time. Yes, it’s shaky because the guy in the first movie pretty much admits to killing Uncle Ben. I don’t like that, but I sympathize with them wishing they could tell a different story, and knowing that movies are kind of set in stone until they are remade. So they didn’t have a real choice in the matter.

Anyway, not only is the mud symbolic of revenge, but revenge has been the driving force of Harry and his father’s characters since the first movie. So it was gong to be a major part of this one anyway.

And the contrast between how Peter, Harry, and that other guy (Eddie?) handle their revengeful wishes is important.

All three are consumed by it for a time, but we see that with people who’s character started off stronger and more loyal in the beginning can easier throw off their anger an hatred.

Harry, even though h’es mostly a wimp, a crybaby, and a jerk; had his moments of being willing to help MJ and not wanting to kill his best friend.

Those moments of humanity and mercy on Harry’s part show he’s better than his father, who didn’t really resist the goblin’s sway. And also show that he truly felt something for Peter and MJ at one time.

Eddie (?) on the other hand was dishonest and cocksure from the start. It’s not exactly fair to say he was evil; and he had less reason for his actions than Peter or Harry. But the mud was influencing his mind, and he clearly did not have the character to resist.

A brilliance of this plot was having Peter’s revenge and jerkish-ness be verbal as well as physical. And show up in other areas of life. We see how vicious he has become in the club scene with MJ, but it’s enough to make him realize what this has done to him.

That he runs to a church is not a coincidence. He did tell Eddie “If you want forgiveness, get religion.” How interesting that you could read that as “if you want forgiveness in yourself.”

It’s never been hidden that Aunt May is a Christian, and that Peter has been raised with some knowledge of that faith. It shows in a lot of the things he says and does at critical moments in all three movies.

This movie was dark. Peter is a lot less nice in it. He’s starting to get a big head. MJ also does a lot of stuff we don’t love.

But as Peter says, when people have problems, they work through them.

There’s times in our lives when we aren’t so pretty, and we aren’t so loving as we might wish. I’ve had them. You’ve had them. The point is not that we are worse people, it’s nothing out of the ordinary, but that we move on and become better for it. That’s the extraordinary thing.

This movie is also about choice. As Peter says at the end in his narration. All three movies were about having a choice. Peter says Harry taught him that.

But really, Harry just capped it off. Peter had seen that already with Norman Osborne, and Dr. Octopus, and Venom, and his own life.

We have a choice. We can choose to forgive. Even ourselves.

That’s the movie’s message in a nutshell.

–Natasha.