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The Herald Scotland
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
How Spider-Man made me late for work in Glasgow
The Marvel (or, um, Sony) production took over the streets on July 31, and it has since been revealed that the shoot has been extended. Previously due to wrap up on August 15, Glasgow will now keep its Big Apple costume on until August 26. Bothwell Street, Blythswood Street, and West Campbell Street are among the roads closed for Spider-Man 4, or Spiderman: Brand New Day. Further filming is set to take place around the Merchant City area, with road restrictions in place there as well. 'It's the first time you can say Spiderman made you late for work,' one of my colleagues joked. But it's true. Quite a few stragglers have grumbled about the traffic, the endless tailbacks and rerouted buses. As if driving into Glasgow city centre could get any worse. Nearly a month of disruption! The chaos! If you are stuck in your car, crawling along Ingram Street on your way into the office this month, something to consider is why you are even driving into the city centre to begin with. The 11-day shoot extension is a great opportunity to think about where your nearest park and ride is. You could spend the weekend dusting the cobwebs off your old bicycle and zip into town on one of the new cycle lanes. Not everyone can ditch their car. Some people require them for accessibility reasons; others require them specifically for work. But if you do not actually need to drive into the city centre, you shouldn't. Every driver is someone else's delay. The plethora of road closures is as good an excuse as any to kick-start a habit shift. Now is also a great time to remind you that ScotRail will be dropping its deranged and asinine peak fares on September 1 so it might finally be cheaper to take public transport than drive (I can't speak for the buses). Those people who kiss their cars goodnight bemoan the council's car-free agenda. But it is a bit rich. The city centre is still completely dominated by cars. There is only around 700m of pedestrianised space in Glasgow City Centre (Buchanan Street, Sauchiehall Street, Argyle Street, Royal Exchange and St Enoch Square). Compare this with your average European city, where people-friendly space usually ranges from more than a kilometre to multiple hectares, and it's hard to argue that Glasgow hates cars. Fans watching Spider-Man 4 filming. (Image: Colin Mearns) The Spider-Man set makes clear that Glasgow really does look a lot like New York. Glasgow was one of the first cities to have a gridiron street plan, which partially inspired New York's layout. But Glasgow's streets have long stopped being a model for anyone to mimic. The Avenues Programme and the City Centre Transformation Plan (2022-32) are ambitious and forward-thinking, but the planet will already have gone up in flames before either is realised. The rollout of the Avenues Programme is sluggish. Movement seems to inch along slower than the traffic at St Vincent Street these past few weeks. Whether by design or by default, the paperwork always seems to take priority over shovel-in-the-ground progress. I sometimes wonder how many trees are sacrificed for all of these consultations. Across the pond in the real New York City, they just get on with it. They have a more do first, refine later approach, which means urban improvements don't drag on for years. They start with the quickest things to implement, like the paint and the planters, restricting the traffic swiftly to mimic what the end result will be. It means people can shift their routes and get used to the new layout. Meanwhile in Glasgow, planters sit empty for years and building sites lie untouched and collecting rubbish for reasons not communicated to the public. Part of the reason New York is good at cracking on is because the city has the public imagination for more people-friendly spaces. There is a strong anti-pedestrianisation lobby in Glasgow, it seems, and infrastructure changes that prioritise active travel are typically hit with resistance from both businesses and residents. In New York (as well as in many European cities), people just expect city centre areas to be pedestrianised. Our city centre has come a long way over the last few years, and there are ambitious plans to return large swathes of the city back to the people. The controversial Low Emission Zone has significantly improved air quality, the cycle lanes are starting to come together, and it is getting easier to see the elaborate vision of The Avenues project. But maybe we should take a lesson from New York and just implement whatever the final traffic routes will be now. In New York, they just used lawn chairs. It is amazing what Hollywood can do for the imagination. Spider-Man turning Glasgow into New York for a few weeks makes it easy to see the city in a new light and envision its potential as a prospering metropolis that is actually enjoyable to spend time in. We just need to get the planters and the paint out while searching for the shovels in the shed. Spider-Man deserves a friendly neighbourhood to prance around in. Marissa MacWhirter is a columnist and feature writer at The Herald, and the editor of The Glasgow Wrap. The newsletter is curated between 5-7am each morning, bringing the best of local news to your inbox each morning without ads, clickbait, or hyperbole. Oh, and it's free. She can be found on X @marissaamayy1
The Herald Scotland
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
I'm fed up – what's the point in Spider-Man taking over Glasgow?
Once again, the streets of Glasgow are being taken over by some uncanny valley New York City simulation. Spider-Man: Brand New Day continues filming for most of this month, with The Herald reporting that its stay in the centre has just been extended. Read more: Marvel extends Glasgow shoot for new Spider-Man movie The spectacle of major Hollywood productions arriving in Glasgow still draws huge fanfare. Spectators are crowding the set even on non-filming days just to soak up the scene. On filming days, curiosity peaks when large-scale movie magic is being constructed and executed right in front of our eyes. And who could miss the small chance of power couple Tom Holland and Zendaya possibly making an appearance in front of the little people? But it is a disruption with diminishing returns. Glasgow has already suffered through this rodeo before with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Batman – and saw a huge waste of resources and labour thrown at the Batgirl film that was eventually cancelled and shelved altogether. In the end, its $90 million budget resulted in a neat little tax write-off for Warner Bros, but not much else. As Glasgow continues to transform into a playground for Hollywood executives taking advantage of tax, labour, and location incentives to keep their budgets down, how long will the public accept the everyday disruption to their lives? It may still seem novel at this point, and able to capture stars in eyes, but there will come a time when the glossy façade becomes second nature, and the logic and purpose behind these elaborate shoots in the dense city will come up empty. I suppose the people of Glasgow could just be eternally grateful that Hollywood continues to prefer the city as a shooting location, but then I would like to think Glasgow has more dignity than that. The story of Glasgow becoming a satellite state for Hollywood production is twofold. On one side, Hollywood studios are contracting more production work outside of their native California, citing the large toll of the state's tax and labour costs. Read more: Trump film tariff proves Scottish film cannot afford to sell out to Hollywood One egregious example is the game show The Floor, hosted by Rob Lowe. It is standard trivia game fare that doesn't require much more than a soundstage (something that Hollywood studio backlots are full of), yet it films on a soundstage in Ireland. That's right, it is somehow cheaper for Hollywood to ship the set, the crew and its star host over to Ireland than it is to film in their literal back garden. The entire system of production is backwards and hilariously broken. From this broken mess comes the other side, where ministers in the Scottish Government observed the beneficial scraps that other smaller countries like Ireland and Denmark were receiving and wanted in on the action. Now, Scotland competes with these other countries and will need to provide ever-increasing incentives to stay in the picture. There's nowhere to go except a race to the bottom in accommodating the ever-bigger demands of the major studios. How much longer will large-scale productions continue to dazzle a spectating public? (Image: Colin Mearns) The government and Screen Scotland's rallying cry when pushback arises to the spectacle is that such large productions boost the local economy and promote tourism. In what ways and how is still a mystery, and there is little transparency, as if they are being wilfully obtuse about the tangible benefits of it all. And it seems counterintuitive, considering how such shoots block off and shut down chunks of the local economy while filming runs. Councils pay off the businesses to shut down, but that's to the businesses, not the workers. Many of the workers based on these streets are under zero-hour contracts and won't see a penny of restitution. These workers, who likely survive month to month, are seeing their income shrivelling the more production takes up space and resources. Read more: How the Scottish Government's deal with Hollywood failed I'm sure the whole operation works out nicely for a governmental body looking to promote something, but is this really the way for government and councils to seek economic opportunity? It, in effect, turns our arts and culture sector into a business, with all its major decisions branching from its economic standpoint. Something never, ever asked is this: what artistic and cultural value do these large-scale public shoots contribute? Forget the suit talk of economic and tourist benefits – you're never going to personally experience that money – what about these shoots enriches Glasgow and Scotland in its heart, its soul, or its spirit? My guess is nothing. Zilch. Nada.
The Herald Scotland
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
I'm fed up – what's the point in Spiderman taking over Glasgow?
Once again, the streets of Glasgow are being taken over by some uncanny valley New York City simulation. Spiderman: Brand New Day continues filming for most of this month, with The Herald reporting that its stay in the centre has just been extended. Read more: Marvel extends Glasgow shoot for new Spider-Man movie The spectacle of major Hollywood productions arriving in Glasgow still draws huge fanfare. Spectators are crowding the set even on non-filming days just to soak up the scene. On filming days, curiosity peaks when large-scale movie magic is being constructed and executed right in front of our eyes. And who could miss the small chance of power couple Tom Holland and Zendaya possibly making an appearance in front of the little people? But it is a disruption with diminishing returns. Glasgow has already suffered through this rodeo before with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Batman – and saw a huge waste of resources and labour thrown at the Batgirl film that was eventually cancelled and shelved altogether. In the end, its $90 million budget resulted in a neat little tax write-off for Warner Bros, but not much else. As Glasgow continues to transform into a playground for Hollywood executives taking advantage of tax, labour, and location incentives to keep their budgets down, how long will the public accept the everyday disruption to their lives? It may still seem novel at this point, and able to capture stars in eyes, but there will come a time when the glossy façade becomes second nature, and the logic and purpose behind these elaborate shoots in the dense city will come up empty. I suppose the people of Glasgow could just be eternally grateful that Hollywood continues to prefer the city as a shooting location, but then I would like to think Glasgow has more dignity than that. The story of Glasgow becoming a satellite state for Hollywood production is twofold. On one side, Hollywood studios are contracting more production work outside of their native California, citing the large toll of the state's tax and labour costs. Read more: Trump film tariff proves Scottish film cannot afford to sell out to Hollywood One egregious example is the game show The Floor, hosted by Rob Lowe. It is standard trivia game fare that doesn't require much more than a soundstage (something that Hollywood studio backlots are full of), yet it films on a soundstage in Ireland. That's right, it is somehow cheaper for Hollywood to ship the set, the crew and its star host over to Ireland than it is to film in their literal back garden. The entire system of production is backwards and hilariously broken. From this broken mess comes the other side, where ministers in the Scottish Government observed the beneficial scraps that other smaller countries like Ireland and Denmark were receiving and wanted in on the action. Now, Scotland competes with these other countries and will need to provide ever-increasing incentives to stay in the picture. There's nowhere to go except a race to the bottom in accommodating the ever-bigger demands of the major studios. How much longer will large-scale productions continue to dazzle a spectating public? (Image: Colin Mearns) The government and Screen Scotland's rallying cry when pushback arises to the spectacle is that such large productions boost the local economy and promote tourism. In what ways and how is still a mystery, and there is little transparency, as if they are being wilfully obtuse about the tangible benefits of it all. And it seems counterintuitive, considering how such shoots block off and shut down chunks of the local economy while filming runs. Councils pay off the businesses to shut down, but that's to the businesses, not the workers. Many of the workers based on these streets are under zero-hour contracts and won't see a penny of restitution. These workers, who likely survive month to month, are seeing their income shrivelling the more production takes up space and resources. Read more: How the Scottish Government's deal with Hollywood failed I'm sure the whole operation works out nicely for a governmental body looking to promote something, but is this really the way for government and councils to seek economic opportunity? It, in effect, turns our arts and culture sector into a business, with all its major decisions branching from its economic standpoint. Something never, ever asked is this: what artistic and cultural value do these large-scale public shoots contribute? Forget the suit talk of economic and tourist benefits – you're never going to personally experience that money – what about these shoots enriches Glasgow and Scotland in its heart, its soul, or its spirit? My guess is nothing. Zilch. Nada.
