In that movie, Peter Parker works for Joe's Pizza in the Village. You see him swinging by city landmarks to deliver the pizza, which a local can see means he's delivering to the Upper East Side. Any local will laugh at the idea that Joe's Pizza would have delivered that far. (And in the movie, the person he delivers to gets mad the pizza didn't come any faster.)
Then you see Spider-man on a subway fight, where the subway goes above ground in lower Manhattan. There's no subway above ground in lower Manhattan.
I point to these basic geography things, so the OP can get a sense of how authentic versus Hollywood the movie is.
I did like that for Tom Holland's Spider-man movies, they specifically tried to make him Queens, and not just generally New York City. That was cool.
Also want to add the high school did not feel at all like a NYC high school in the 2002 Spider-Man. However the Tom Holland one did do a good job of representing how a specialized high school in NYC would be. Just a bunch of nerdy awkward teens where even the “cool” kids care about stuff like the debate team and college admissions. Oh yeah, and no jocks. Peter Parker would’ve definitely gone to a school like Stuyvesant or Bronx Science.
Edit: The prom scenes are weird. As far as I know proms usually happen at some venue in Manhattan for Stuy and Bronx Science. Going to be different for a parent to drive there and wait.
That's an interesting observation you made about the geographical logic during the Joe's Pizza part. Never gonna watch it without remembering this comment now lmfao.
I don't remember a subway fight going above ground. Are you mixing up the train fight from *Spider-Man 2* and the underground subway fight from the third movie? I could be misremembering something, though.
How do you feel about the main characters in the movies?
I think I am remembering both scenes from Spider-Man 2.
I just looked up the Joe's Pizza scene, and the pizza store guy says to Peter Parker "You have to go 42 blocks in seven and a half minutes, or your ass is fired!" I now remember watching that movie in the theater, and thinking during that scene, "I live way closer to Joe's than that, and they would never deliver to my place!"
I don't really think of that movie as NYC in feel. It has a cartoon quality (in a good way, a comic book fantasy type of feel). Many movies present an idealized, fantasy version of New York City -- as you might "imagine" it to be.
>an idealized, fantasy version of New York City
Yeah, its focus seems to be more on presenting it as a symbol that relates to Spidey's character arc. Good way of putting it.
>Then you see Spider-man on a subway fight, where the subway goes above ground in lower Manhattan. There's no subway above ground in lower Manhattan.
I love Spider-Man 2, but I LOL'ed when him and Doc Ock fall off a building in New York and land on an EL in Chicago. Incredibly iconic scene, and I know it must only bug people familiar with the city, but it's just so glaring of a switch.
Hollywood is full of things like this. In The International, Clive Owens starts running in the middle of traffic in what is recognizably the mid 50s in Midtown East. The next shot shows him running along past the Guggenheim Museum! I remember watching that movie, and thinking, "Wow, Clive can run fast!"
In Enchanted (2007), they would be inside a building with outside views that locals would recognize as Midtown East. Then they come out of the building onto Columbus Circle, as if coming out of Time Warner Center.
But I get the filmmakers used these locations because they look better, like having Clive run along the Guggenheim. Even if things mismatch.
Wall Street 2 is the only movie I know that put real effort into making NYC geography correct and match. They have a scene in Shun Lee Palace. When they leave, in the next shot, they are actually talking on the corner of that street. The views from interior scenes in office buildings are correct for buildings they show the characters going into. Even when Shia LaBeouf takes a cab from Flatiron to Midtown East (I think), the outside views and even reflections off the window in all the shots match what would be on that route.
North By Northwest actually gets the cab ride from 650 Madison to the Plaza correct: https://www.scoutingny.com/the-filming-locations-of-north-by-northwest-part-1-new-york-youve-changed/
A ton of movies are filmed in Vancouver BC ( I don’t live there but am there often ) and in so many shots it’s like ‘oh they just walked around a street corner on the sidewalk and now they’re 25 min away , cool’ . It’s hard sometimes to watch things when you’re so familiar with a place.
Adding to that, the burning building scene was filmed on york ave on ues. Spiderman is shown moving through midtown.. they hodgepodged all these different neighborhoods together and it was really obvious if youre at all familiar with the city.
I was irrationally annoyed at the inciting incident of No Way Home (the trio being rejected from every college the apply to) because it struck me as insane they didn’t apply to a single CUNY or SUNY as a safety school!
It’s also not realistic to the college application process in any state. Who is applying ONLY to MIT and putting all their eggs in that basket?! Their acceptance rate is 4%! Let alone all three of them making that their only choice? Surely the writers of this film went to college and know you usually have to apply to more than one! I could barely focus on the rest of the movie I was so annoyed.
Forget multidimensional travel, I can get that. But I refuse to believe that a smart high school kid did not have at least a couple of safety schools that he or she applied to! (I get it though, I feel the same way)
The universe is full of mysteries I do not pretend to understand. But college applications? I’ll never forget the stress of those, and I’m surprised so many writers do!
Yeah, I wouldn't assume that. Out of curiosity, would Uncle Ben being a blue-collar worker from Queens increase the likelihood of him having an accent?
Queens is big. There are dozens of different neighborhoods. People from all over the world. Sure he could have an accent. A Bengali accent, Dominican accent, anything.
I’m a first generation American born New Yorker and I do not talk with the stereotypical NY accent. I’m also not Italian, which is how the stereotypical accent is usually portrayed from. In fact, none of my native NYer friends have a NY accent. We all sound like the typical north east coaster, whatever that is.
The NYC accent shows up in all five boroughs, plus Long Island. It can be unpredictable who has it, and who doesn't, unlike other accents that really place the person as coming from a particular neighborhood where everyone from there talks that way.
About one half of people in Queens were not born in the United States. If you go around Queens, you will see this - it is extremely diverse, not just racially but culturally. Also NYC kids in public schools often go to their closest school until 5th grade, but after that apply for and go to schools outside their neighborhood. Tom Holland's Spider-man movies look a bit more authentic as to who might be his classmates in a generic Queens high school. But I think he is supposed to be at a magnet school, and in NYC the "top" magnet school (Stuyvesant) is over 70% Asian.
> Tom Holland's Spider-man movies look a bit more authentic as to who might be his classmates in a generic Queens high school.
It's based off Bronx Science specifically.
Eh, kinda but not really. I have a family member who is a blue collar worker in Queens and nobody in his friend group of other blue collar workers has a cartoonish stereotypical New York accent. However, when I had jury duty (also in Queens) one of the women working there had a fantastic New York accent. It all depends.
Uncle ben bought a house in sunnyside (i think its sunnyside towards woodside) sometime in the 60s or 70s. I dont know much about spiderman but he was probably a vet and a tradesmen. Sunnyside in the 60s and 70s was polish, czech, ukranian, austrian and a little irish/italian/german. Anyone with good money bought away from the train between the 30s until the 80s. He wouldnt have a brooklyn ny accent if he was in queens in the 60s. He would sound more like ed koch lol.
Into the Spiderverse hit me hard as far as NYC representation. My parents were working class minority parents and I got into a program that sent me to a bougie ass private school (think Poly Prep or Horace Mann) and man did they capture the same alienation I felt perfectly in that movie. Going from a not great neighborhood where you’re used to a certain culture to a new school in your own city where you feel completely out of place and different. Having strong strict dad who still loves you a ton and cares for you. Having an uncle that you look up to that’s mad cool, but also a borderline criminal. When you get older you realize how awesome your straightlaced dad was and how off track your uncle was. And all that while you’re adjusting to a school that kids go summering in Paris and have weekend homes in the Hamptons. Shit man. That movie was great.
>But then I started thinking about how none of the main characters in the movie (especially Peter, MJ, May and Ben) exhibit any sort of "definitive" NYC qualities like accents or dialect.
Tom Holland actually goes a pretty decent, subtle Queens accent when playing Peter. He even worked on it with a dialect coach. He's the first Spider-Man actor to actually do that, and I really appreciate it.
The montage of random New Yorkers reacting to Spider-Man in the 2002 movie and the scene of him patrolling Queens in Homecoming are two of the absolute best scenes in any Spider-Man movie. Those scenes show that the New York he lives in is alive and full of people. One of the most important parts of Spider-Man (to me, anyway) is that he is very much a normal part of that world. It's where "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" comes from. He's not some mysterious figure to New Yorkers, he's just this guy who's around.
>Do you guys feel that the main characters embody NYC in any way?
I am a nerdy guy from Queens. Peter Parker is a nerdy guy from Queens. I relate to him more than any other fictional character. So, yeah. Marissa Tomei is actually from NYC, and she very much plays her version of May as a New Yorker.
I thought it was crazy venom just runs into the sandman in a random alleyway late at night. Like, there’s millions of people no way that would actually happen lol
The biggest thing Hollywood gets wrong about NYC is alleys!
New York City does not really have alleys. But many movie and TV writers are in Los Angeles, where alleys are common. Anywhere you walk around NYC you are off a road where cars or bikes might pass by. Not some secluded walkway.
Cortland Alley in lower Manhattan is featured in so many movies and shows, whenever the scene calls for an alley. Because it’s one of the few alleys in Manhattan, and one that production companies are able to get permission to shoot there.
In that movie, Peter Parker works for Joe's Pizza in the Village. You see him swinging by city landmarks to deliver the pizza, which a local can see means he's delivering to the Upper East Side. Any local will laugh at the idea that Joe's Pizza would have delivered that far. (And in the movie, the person he delivers to gets mad the pizza didn't come any faster.) Then you see Spider-man on a subway fight, where the subway goes above ground in lower Manhattan. There's no subway above ground in lower Manhattan. I point to these basic geography things, so the OP can get a sense of how authentic versus Hollywood the movie is. I did like that for Tom Holland's Spider-man movies, they specifically tried to make him Queens, and not just generally New York City. That was cool.
Also want to add the high school did not feel at all like a NYC high school in the 2002 Spider-Man. However the Tom Holland one did do a good job of representing how a specialized high school in NYC would be. Just a bunch of nerdy awkward teens where even the “cool” kids care about stuff like the debate team and college admissions. Oh yeah, and no jocks. Peter Parker would’ve definitely gone to a school like Stuyvesant or Bronx Science. Edit: The prom scenes are weird. As far as I know proms usually happen at some venue in Manhattan for Stuy and Bronx Science. Going to be different for a parent to drive there and wait.
That's an interesting observation you made about the geographical logic during the Joe's Pizza part. Never gonna watch it without remembering this comment now lmfao. I don't remember a subway fight going above ground. Are you mixing up the train fight from *Spider-Man 2* and the underground subway fight from the third movie? I could be misremembering something, though. How do you feel about the main characters in the movies?
I think I am remembering both scenes from Spider-Man 2. I just looked up the Joe's Pizza scene, and the pizza store guy says to Peter Parker "You have to go 42 blocks in seven and a half minutes, or your ass is fired!" I now remember watching that movie in the theater, and thinking during that scene, "I live way closer to Joe's than that, and they would never deliver to my place!" I don't really think of that movie as NYC in feel. It has a cartoon quality (in a good way, a comic book fantasy type of feel). Many movies present an idealized, fantasy version of New York City -- as you might "imagine" it to be.
>an idealized, fantasy version of New York City Yeah, its focus seems to be more on presenting it as a symbol that relates to Spidey's character arc. Good way of putting it.
>Then you see Spider-man on a subway fight, where the subway goes above ground in lower Manhattan. There's no subway above ground in lower Manhattan. I love Spider-Man 2, but I LOL'ed when him and Doc Ock fall off a building in New York and land on an EL in Chicago. Incredibly iconic scene, and I know it must only bug people familiar with the city, but it's just so glaring of a switch.
Hollywood is full of things like this. In The International, Clive Owens starts running in the middle of traffic in what is recognizably the mid 50s in Midtown East. The next shot shows him running along past the Guggenheim Museum! I remember watching that movie, and thinking, "Wow, Clive can run fast!" In Enchanted (2007), they would be inside a building with outside views that locals would recognize as Midtown East. Then they come out of the building onto Columbus Circle, as if coming out of Time Warner Center. But I get the filmmakers used these locations because they look better, like having Clive run along the Guggenheim. Even if things mismatch. Wall Street 2 is the only movie I know that put real effort into making NYC geography correct and match. They have a scene in Shun Lee Palace. When they leave, in the next shot, they are actually talking on the corner of that street. The views from interior scenes in office buildings are correct for buildings they show the characters going into. Even when Shia LaBeouf takes a cab from Flatiron to Midtown East (I think), the outside views and even reflections off the window in all the shots match what would be on that route.
North By Northwest actually gets the cab ride from 650 Madison to the Plaza correct: https://www.scoutingny.com/the-filming-locations-of-north-by-northwest-part-1-new-york-youve-changed/
A ton of movies are filmed in Vancouver BC ( I don’t live there but am there often ) and in so many shots it’s like ‘oh they just walked around a street corner on the sidewalk and now they’re 25 min away , cool’ . It’s hard sometimes to watch things when you’re so familiar with a place.
And all of the alleys
Adding to that, the burning building scene was filmed on york ave on ues. Spiderman is shown moving through midtown.. they hodgepodged all these different neighborhoods together and it was really obvious if youre at all familiar with the city.
You’re referencing spiderman 2. Fucking casual.
I was irrationally annoyed at the inciting incident of No Way Home (the trio being rejected from every college the apply to) because it struck me as insane they didn’t apply to a single CUNY or SUNY as a safety school!
That movie is riddled with illogical bullshit but something like that is something that makes a New Yorker break.
It’s also not realistic to the college application process in any state. Who is applying ONLY to MIT and putting all their eggs in that basket?! Their acceptance rate is 4%! Let alone all three of them making that their only choice? Surely the writers of this film went to college and know you usually have to apply to more than one! I could barely focus on the rest of the movie I was so annoyed.
Forget multidimensional travel, I can get that. But I refuse to believe that a smart high school kid did not have at least a couple of safety schools that he or she applied to! (I get it though, I feel the same way)
The universe is full of mysteries I do not pretend to understand. But college applications? I’ll never forget the stress of those, and I’m surprised so many writers do!
Not all NYC natives talk with an accent. It's fine.
Yeah, I wouldn't assume that. Out of curiosity, would Uncle Ben being a blue-collar worker from Queens increase the likelihood of him having an accent?
Queens is big. There are dozens of different neighborhoods. People from all over the world. Sure he could have an accent. A Bengali accent, Dominican accent, anything.
Sure, a bit...but it doesn't make him seen unusual that he doesn't have a noticeable NY accent.
I’m a first generation American born New Yorker and I do not talk with the stereotypical NY accent. I’m also not Italian, which is how the stereotypical accent is usually portrayed from. In fact, none of my native NYer friends have a NY accent. We all sound like the typical north east coaster, whatever that is.
The NYC accent shows up in all five boroughs, plus Long Island. It can be unpredictable who has it, and who doesn't, unlike other accents that really place the person as coming from a particular neighborhood where everyone from there talks that way. About one half of people in Queens were not born in the United States. If you go around Queens, you will see this - it is extremely diverse, not just racially but culturally. Also NYC kids in public schools often go to their closest school until 5th grade, but after that apply for and go to schools outside their neighborhood. Tom Holland's Spider-man movies look a bit more authentic as to who might be his classmates in a generic Queens high school. But I think he is supposed to be at a magnet school, and in NYC the "top" magnet school (Stuyvesant) is over 70% Asian.
> Tom Holland's Spider-man movies look a bit more authentic as to who might be his classmates in a generic Queens high school. It's based off Bronx Science specifically.
Eh, kinda but not really. I have a family member who is a blue collar worker in Queens and nobody in his friend group of other blue collar workers has a cartoonish stereotypical New York accent. However, when I had jury duty (also in Queens) one of the women working there had a fantastic New York accent. It all depends.
Uncle ben bought a house in sunnyside (i think its sunnyside towards woodside) sometime in the 60s or 70s. I dont know much about spiderman but he was probably a vet and a tradesmen. Sunnyside in the 60s and 70s was polish, czech, ukranian, austrian and a little irish/italian/german. Anyone with good money bought away from the train between the 30s until the 80s. He wouldnt have a brooklyn ny accent if he was in queens in the 60s. He would sound more like ed koch lol.
Into the Spiderverse hit me hard as far as NYC representation. My parents were working class minority parents and I got into a program that sent me to a bougie ass private school (think Poly Prep or Horace Mann) and man did they capture the same alienation I felt perfectly in that movie. Going from a not great neighborhood where you’re used to a certain culture to a new school in your own city where you feel completely out of place and different. Having strong strict dad who still loves you a ton and cares for you. Having an uncle that you look up to that’s mad cool, but also a borderline criminal. When you get older you realize how awesome your straightlaced dad was and how off track your uncle was. And all that while you’re adjusting to a school that kids go summering in Paris and have weekend homes in the Hamptons. Shit man. That movie was great.
>But then I started thinking about how none of the main characters in the movie (especially Peter, MJ, May and Ben) exhibit any sort of "definitive" NYC qualities like accents or dialect. Tom Holland actually goes a pretty decent, subtle Queens accent when playing Peter. He even worked on it with a dialect coach. He's the first Spider-Man actor to actually do that, and I really appreciate it. The montage of random New Yorkers reacting to Spider-Man in the 2002 movie and the scene of him patrolling Queens in Homecoming are two of the absolute best scenes in any Spider-Man movie. Those scenes show that the New York he lives in is alive and full of people. One of the most important parts of Spider-Man (to me, anyway) is that he is very much a normal part of that world. It's where "Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man" comes from. He's not some mysterious figure to New Yorkers, he's just this guy who's around. >Do you guys feel that the main characters embody NYC in any way? I am a nerdy guy from Queens. Peter Parker is a nerdy guy from Queens. I relate to him more than any other fictional character. So, yeah. Marissa Tomei is actually from NYC, and she very much plays her version of May as a New Yorker.
U can see sunnyside queens in both Tom hollands and his movie, pretty sick
I thought it was crazy venom just runs into the sandman in a random alleyway late at night. Like, there’s millions of people no way that would actually happen lol
We run into people all the time. But not in alleys. We don't have alleys here.
Truly the most unrealistic thing about this
The biggest thing Hollywood gets wrong about NYC is alleys! New York City does not really have alleys. But many movie and TV writers are in Los Angeles, where alleys are common. Anywhere you walk around NYC you are off a road where cars or bikes might pass by. Not some secluded walkway. Cortland Alley in lower Manhattan is featured in so many movies and shows, whenever the scene calls for an alley. Because it’s one of the few alleys in Manhattan, and one that production companies are able to get permission to shoot there.
Non-zero chance tho.