Dear Wes Anderson,
I would like to open this letter with a bit of flattery. In the wake of the release of Isle of Dogs (which I needed to be pointed out was an obvious pun), I watched and rewatched a large selection of your filmography. By now, I have seen all of your films bar Rushmore and Bottle Rocket, and I have liked most of them (as many people pointed out, Darjeeling Limited was perhaps a bad move). Out of the ones I’ve seen, I’d probably say the Grand Budapest Hotel is my hotel (yes, I am a boring person), though I my second favorite, oddly enough, is Life Aquatic. Overall, I would say you’re one of the best working filmmakers of the 21stcentury. That isn’t to say you’re without critique (which I won’t get into so as to avoid losing you before I get to the reason why I wrote this letter), but I think striking you from the “list of quality filmmakers” would be a terrible loss in the way losing John Ford or Peter Jackson wouldn’t.
Now that I’ve gotten the flattery out of the way, I need your help. Before I get to what I need you to do, I first need to set up some context. Said context being the fact that The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the greatest superhero movie ever made. Now there are some people out there (including Aleph Null, who commissioned this piece) who would wish this film to be stricken from the record of the Superhero Film Canon. However, this is impossible both because Canon is a bullshit concept that has stagnated many a story (Grant Morrison’s Batman post New 52) and limited what one can and can’t do with a character (Dr. Light: Rape Fetishist) and because of the fact that, within the first act of the film, Spider-Man is revealed to have access to hammerspace.
Now, in case you’re not aware (or, rather, the people reading this who aren’t you aren’t aware [I’m sure you’re aware of what hammerspace is, Mr. Anderson]), hammerspace is a concept derived from Looney Tunes cartoons wherein a character is capable of pulling objects of varying sizes from seemingly nowhere. (In Spider-Man’s case, a simple cell phone.) By doing this, the filmmakers not only connect Spidey to a legacy of trickster characters (see also the various homages to silent comedy and slapstick romances), but they also reveal what Spider-Man looks like from outside of his own head. From our perspective, we see Spidey as this down on his luck jerk who breaks down at the sign of pressure. But this is due to having access to his interior monologue. He doesn’t, contrary to the amazing work in Chip Zdarsky’s Howard the Duck, crawl into a ball to cry about Uncle Ben for two weeks. Instead, he keeps his feelings bottled up until they explode into giving up all together or deciding that it’s a good idea to murder Norman Osborn instead of helping Harry out as he’s going through a bad trip. Not the typical day-to-day superheroing, is what I’m saying.
But without that interior monologue, the average New York citizen sees Spidey as this witty chaotic trickster. A slim fool who outwits his opponents while making jokes about the situation they both find themselves in. One who frequently dons disguises to trick his opponents (typically an extremely easily to anger white guy) into falling into their own traps. In short, most people see Spider-Man as Bugs Bunny. By making this connection literal via the introduction of hammerspace into Spider-Man’s powers, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 not only justifies its own existence, but it also puts to shame every single other Spider-Man story after it that refuses to acknowledge this ability of Peter’
But this isn’t enough to make the film the greatest superhero movie ever made. Indeed, there’s a stronger case to be made that it’s one of the worst, though not the reasons most give for it. The main arguments from most of the critiques of the film that I’ve seen range from “This is a film that exists solely to keep Spider-Man from being in the MCU” (one could make a sensible argument that’s actually a virtue of the film, given who owns the MCU) to “They should have let Sam Rami make Spider-Man 4” (No, no they should not). The actual vices people bring up tend to be the decision to uncritically kill off Gwen Stacy (and indeed not give the character or any female characters within the film much to do on screen [they tend to spend most of their time in the margins of the film doing interesting things, which is a complaint that could be raised at every single Spider-Man film]), the plotline involving Peter’s Dad is a bit shit with its “proper” conclusion being left on the cutting room floor, and the fact that the film is structurally convoluted, juggling 4-7 different plotlines at a time and not always making them work.
(One point of ambiguity that I noted at the time was the decision to have Electro in a hoodie when he’s confronted by a cop who believes him to be a threat and is prepared to fire on him. In case you’ve forgotten about this film [and apologies about assuming you have memories of the Amazing Spider-Man 2], Electro is played by noted African American actor Jamie Foxx. The implications of this are not ones I am prepared to tackle. I can see the argument that this is a critique of the police, but it’s slim enough that I don’t feel comfortable making the argument, even if I wasn’t a white guy. I would be interested in someone else making an analysis of that scene, be it positive or otherwise. It’s an implication that no one was prepared for.)
At the same time though, the plotlines never collapse into incoherence and indeed feature some amazing character work. Off the top of my head there’s the scene where Peter tries to talk down Electro before he accidentally kills some people, the bit on the bridge that’s easily the most romantic comedy moment of the two films (indeed, for good and for ill, the films fit nicely within the romantic comedy genre), and the moment where Aunt May calls Peter out for obsessing over the “Peter’s Dad did some BAD THINGS” plotline. The action is a marked improvement over the previous film, with the lighting and cinematography making for some terrific shots. And there are some fascinating implications that are left unspoken (If one were inclined to make a redemptive read out of the film instead of an argument on why it’s the greatest superhero film ever made, one would note the first film’s thematic interests in the duality between love and horror and the metafictional critique of Nolan’s Batman [which made being the first superhero film to come out after The Avengers hurt it even more], the flagrantly obvious identity of Mr. Fears [and the subsequent implications], the way the film empathizes with the plight of Harry Osborn even when treating him as a figure of ambiguity, and how there is no good capitalist to balance out the realistically cartoonish villainy of Oscorp, and one can make the read that the Amazing Spider-Man films are part of a trilogy about how capitalism is a system that hurts everyone within it, even those who allegedly benefit from it. And it is the Amazing Spider-Man 2 that does the majority of the legwork. Of course, were the Amazing Spider-Man 3 to be made by some mad fanboy as part of a comic adaptation [since it’s reasonable to assume the Amazing Spider-Man 2’s production burnt a lot of bridges], it would end with the Marvel Cinematic Universe literally eating the universe as if it was Galactus, ending with the bleak note that capitalism ultimately consumes everything it touches).
So what we have is a mixed bag of a film elevated by the occasional clever brilliant bit. In short, it’s the perfect expression of the superhero genre. As a genre, there are some fleetingly great moments, but as a genre it is also defined by the majority of writer’s inability to write interesting stories about women and people of color outside of the margins, implications in regards to the plausibility of fascism as a read on what the superhero is, and several behind the scenes corporate stuff that makes it unethical to read any works within the genre. The genre has produced works by brilliant artists and writers like JH Williams III and Donny Cates, but it also spawned works by awful storytellers like Howard Chakyn and Chuck Dixon. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is the greatest superhero movie ever made because it is the only one capable of expressing the multitudes of the genre. It’s the greatest… because the superhero genre is shit.
Which, at long last, brings us to you, Mr. Anderson. What I want from you is simple: I don’t want the Amazing Spider-Man 2 to be the greatest superhero film ever made, PLEASE ADAPT FLEX MENTALLO: MAN OF MUSCLE MYSTERY TO THE BIG SCREEN!!!!
I should probably elaborate on that point. Flex Mentallo follows two separate plot lines. The first is a semi noir tale about a superhero, the titular Flex Mentallo, trapped in the real world discovering that one of his friends, The Fact, is working for a terrorist organization in the real world and must uncover the reason behind the plot. The second follows Flex’s creator, Wally Sage, as he talks to a suicide hotline about all those shitty amazing comics he read as a kid shortly after taking enough pills to be fatal. All the while, the apocalypse looms.
In many regards, even putting aside the quirky aesthetics of the comic, you are the perfect director to adapt the comic. As with many of your films, the light colors and oddly formal means of talking belie stories of depression, guilt, and striving to be better, which this comic likewise exemplifies. In many ways, despite coming out roughly the same time as Bottle Rocket, Flex Mentallo exemplifies the ethos and implications of your more recent career turn towards artifice as a means of expressing unspeakable honesty that you are the perfect director to adapt this comic.
And by having such a perfect director adapt a work about the comics medium, warts and all, I believe your Flex Mentallo is the only thing that can usurp the Amazing Spider-Man 2 as the greatest superhero film ever made. I mean, at this point it’s either you or Teen Titans Go! to the Movies.
Thank you for whatever time you have provided this rubbish letter,
Sean Dillon
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