Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | February 25, 2026
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that conservatives give a damn about the Statue of Liberty. They may have pretended to at one point, but current events (and acts of the administration) make it clear that “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” is not something they believe in. So, I found it amusing that many conservative comic book and comic book movie sites (there are many, and they are awful) are flipping out over a recent admission by Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman.
You’d think that they’d be upset about a big part of what he said: that Sony will be rebooting their Spider-Man spinoff universe with new movies. That’s insane! Not only were movies like Madame Web and Morbious awful, but they are the butt of many jokes. There is no recovery to be had there, Tom. Spider-Man without Spider-Man does not work. It also doesn’t help that the Spidey you’re leaving out is the incredibly talented Tom Holland. But no, that’s not what folks are focusing on.
Instead, they’re bringing up that Rothman, appearing on an episode of The Town podcast, said Spider-Man: No Way Home didn’t make 2 billion dollars. His reason why it didn’t make that much is that it wasn’t shown in China. It wasn’t shown in China because they were asked to remove the Statue of Liberty if they wanted it to screen there. If you’ve seen the film, you know that most of the climax takes place… at the Statue of Liberty. So, obviously, that change was not made.
Not only would it have been difficult to do so, but Rothman explained that he “really didn’t look forward to sitting in front of Congress telling them why I cut the Statue of Liberty out at the request of the Chinese Communist Party.” Later, host Matt Belloni jokes that he doesn’t expect to see the Statue in the next film, and Rothman confirms the suspicion, joking that it is a total coincidence. So, there are headlines about the CEO bending the knee to the Communist Party.
Is it a great look? No. Is it some attack on Democracy? Absolutely not. These movies aren’t motivated by some American ideal to begin with. They’re after that almighty dollar and driven by capitalism. Giving in to China’s demands to ensure that the next film makes even more money is about as American as it gets. You grasp onto any chance to squeeze out a few extra dollars, even if it makes no sense and is driven by an algorithm that didn’t understand people were making fun of you (I’m talking about Morbius now, but still, same company).
