This is going to be the weirdest blog post I ever wrote.
By the way, I am going to write about spoilers for Spider-Man: No Way Home, Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, The Eternals, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, and Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
So to begin with, I’ll say that I am a Spider-Man fan. Lately for reasons more personal than most people have. The relationship between Spider-Man and MJ has a kind of a parallel with something going on in my own personal life. I regularly post on Facebook about Spider-Man and MJ, or more specifically about Tom Holland and Zendaya. Zendaya is taller than Tom Holland, and I have this thing about this chick who is taller than me. So I connect with that whole image on a personal level. It’s this personal connection that has me really pissed off about the latest Spider-Man movie that was recently released. The basic story of the movie was the concept that the world would be saved if everybody forgets who Spider-Man is, even his MJ. If I were to personalize it, it would constitute a kind of a message: “Jonathan. If the whole world and MJ completely forgets you, all will be well.”
This isn’t the first time this has happened with a Marvel Movie. When Shang Chi came out I thought it was an amazing movie, but aspects of the story were very chilling to me. I thought it was great overall, but I was most particularly impressed by Tony Leung’s incredibly nuanced and powerful performance of the Mandarin, the villain of the story. In that movie, the bad guy had a longing to bring a woman he loved back into his life, but according to the story, doing so would actually bring about the end of the world, so the hero of the film had to stop him. Again, I have been on a personal mission to bring a woman I love into the world, and everybody is trying to stop that from happening. So to compare the movie with my personal life, I’m the bad guy! It really feels like Disney is out to get me at this point. I know I have a penchant for saying crazy things and literally have a history of being clinically crazy with PTSD and the 2019 mental collapse thing that I mention here and there. My hope is that my crazy stuff entertains and enlightens. These statements about this Spider-Man movie and Shang Chi will probably come up toward the top of the crazy list, however. But it’s like these freaking movies are saying stuff directly to me. Oh, yeah, and did I tell you I have a history of personalizing Spotify songs? Ask MJ about that…LMFAO!
Now on a similar but slightly different track, let’s talk about the Eternals. In that movie, the basic plot of the movie was that when the population of the world reached a certain point, the world would end, and a new divine being would come into the universe. The heroes had to band together to stop it. The whole event was portrayed to be the twisted plan of an imperfect type of God that had to be thwarted. But the basic idea of population levels being related to the end of the world has a parallel in the New Testament.
When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.
Revelation 6:9-11
Apparently, according to the book of Revelation, the Messiah will come back to redeem the earth when the population of servants of God has been completed. To those who care about the New Testament, this would be a good thing. But according to the producers at Disney, this would be a bad thing that needs to be stopped.
Now Marvel movies aren’t the only ones that I’ve seen some strange things in. In the movie Batman vs. Superman, Superman sacrifices his life to destroy evil, and in the process redeems Batman, who had lost hope in his ability to make the world a better place and had fallen from his original values. This is almost like an allegory of the Gospel, like something from Canterbury Tales. The redemptive power of the crucifixion of a superbeing. But as far as I know, the creator of the movie, Zack Snyder, doesn’t follow the New Testament. I follow him on Vero and saw him put up a picture of the Baghavad Gita once. It was great to see his spiritual quest. I’ve read the Gita a couple of times myself. But I am just saying that I wonder if this guy was creating Gospel allegories without even knowing it.
Finally, Zack followed this movie with his Justice League movie, which was also replete with New Testament motifs. We see Batman the redeemed shepherd assemble the Justice League, the resurrection of Superman the savior, and the preservation of the Trinity (separation of the mother boxes) in order to prevent our world from being made into Satan’s paradise.
So I tend to see some unusual themes and messages in superhero movies in addition to Spotify songs. Now when it comes to this new Spider-Man movie, the main thing in my life right now is getting to Israel, and the title of the movie is literally “No Way Home.” Like, since when does the final installment of a trilogy have such a negative and fatalistic title and nobody notices? The trilogy should have been “Homecoming,” “Far From Home,” “You Finally Made it Home!” Hollywood always demands a happy ending. But not while Jonathan is trying to get to Israel, his occupational “home” as it were. The title has to be “No Way Home.” Like, “you’re never going to get there, Jonathan.” How annoying!
A current preoccupation in my life is that I am trying to get in touch with this girl who I have never really met with whom I have been instilled a kind of fantastical and undefined love by a series of circumstances that defy any and all explanation and comprehension. The human side of this endeavor is a goal that this love may be properly realized as something either romantic, familial, or amicable. Some of my hardcore fans may remember a particular stanza I wrote a way back.
I could be for you some kind of bizarre intergenerational lover
From “For the Love of a Dutch Girl,” June 23rd, 2020
I could be your uncle unrelated to your father or your mother
I could be your companion who will stand by you until the bitter end
I could just be a contact for when you need advice from a Facebook friend
So I am trying to define and express what came out of all the craziness from 2019, a mess of events so strange I had to write a novel about it. Thank God I have the world’s greatest superhero in my corner to go through it with. I love you and Caterpillar more than you’ll ever know, Chloe.
But connecting all that with the latest Spider-Man movie, so this girl that I need to straighten everything out with is taller than me. Just like Zendaya, the actress who plays Michelle Jones, “MJ,” the girlfriend of Spider-Man in the movies, is taller than Tom Holland, the actor who plays Spider-man. The actors also date in real life and are a kind of an example of a cool Hollywood power couple where the chick is taller than the dude. Frankly I am smitten with those two actors if for no other reason that she’s taller than him like this girl I love is taller than me.
Further, the middle name of this chick I love is “Joy,” which is weird in itself because she’s Dutch. Like, she was born with a little swirl of American on top or something. Anyway, because of that I took to calling her “Miss Joy” in various poems and writings, and then shortened that to MJ, so I now have my very own MJ who is also taller than me like the two actors of the Spider-Man couple.
And this movie ends up saying that the only way Spider-Man can save the world is if MJ forgets who he is – if he is a complete unknown. So while the DC movies were narrating Gospel themes, these Marvel movies seemed to be narrating themes that are personally hostile to me, specifically this thing I have with this chick. Now not all Marvel movies are so dastardly in all ways, however. I have a connection to Captain America as well.
One of the things I dig about Cap is that he is an old man, like I am an old man, and while I dig a chick who is way too young for me, his love is a woman who is an old lady. But overall I am trying to say that I have been seeing a lot in superhero movies. The whole drama about Zack Snyder and the Justice league was a huge event in the media. Not only did he have the three movies that he eventually made, but there were originally supposed to be five, one of them with Superman being the bad guy, and then apparently one with a restored Superman leading the Justice League against the forces of evil.
You’d think that in an allegory with Superman playing the part of the savior, something like this just wouldn’t fit. But actually, it does. What’s the first thing that happened after the events of the New Testament? Religious wars, ridiculous doctrines, ecclesiastical figures acting like corrupt politicians, not even knowing how to read the Bible their organization was based on. We have the Crusades, the annihilation of the New World, the claims that aboriginals aren’t humans and don’t have souls, oppression of women, untold slaughter between different factions of different churches, Jews being put into ghettos in Italy by popes and driven from their homes in Spain by Christian kings, all in the name of Jesus. So if Superman is a metaphor for the Messiah, well, two thousand years of the Christian Church shows us that Superman has been corrupted and turned into a force of evil.
But there is a final movie where Batman and Cyborg and Wonder Woman and Superman all get together like they are supposed to be in order to save the world from the ultimate force for evil. I think that story is very true to the whole, and I think it needs to be told. Meanwhile, AT&T’s stock stays in the dumps. AT&T owns all the intellectual property of the DC universe of Superman and the Justice League. The only DC movies that make any money are the ones that either continue on this story with the same actors and directors and writers, or those that have equally profound themes that are completely disconnected from everything, such as the Joker. And I still read stories where the corporate executives involved, after by some miracle giving Zack seventy million dollars to make the third movie, fought with him at every step along the way to get it done. Maybe that guy is living his own Gospel narrative against the forces of evil.
Which brings me to me. My own story involves seeing strange themes in superhero movies, but also in seeing strange themes in Spotify songs from this chick I got tangled up with in an incomprehensible way. It’s so strange that I wrote a novel about it. You can read it on this website. It’s titled La chica electroquímica and is on the front page on the right. The short of it is that I also saw a bunch of strange patterns in this woman’s playlists on Spotify, and I am trying to figure out what it all means. But I can’t talk to her because of matters of common cultural convention and immediate family relationships.
Because of that terrible situation that also involves religious people slaughtering each other, I can’t reach out to her because if I do, I will surely be pegged as an obsessed stalker and be thrown away to never be heard from again. MJ will certainly forget who I am if that happens, and the latest Spider-Man movie will become a prophecy that I don’t want to come true. I won’t deny that I am obsessed, but nobody will ever believe the reasons I have for being that way.
Ultimately with all this I am trying to demonstrate that our lives are stories written by infinite intelligence that involve violations of the law of probability and impossible forms of synchronicity that demonstrate the divine presence behind all things. This story involves artists writing movies that contain meaning that the artists themselves are not aware of. And for me, it involves the tragic impasse of star crossed love.
Currently I am trying to tackle the twin issues of my own all-consuming drama while getting this message out there and looking for others to help with it. It’s all pretty daunting, and I regularly find myself beyond my own ability to keep hope alive. I hope this post clarifies some of the things behind the rest of the stuff you see on this blog.