Spider-Man: Homecoming' anticipation thread

Agreed for an side of the matter.

 

I'm not exactly sure what the intent was, so I can't comment much beyond that I didn't like the character (bear in mind the Peter Parker Spider-Man is my favorite superhero of all time), while I did like the character in the original movies and Civil War.

Gonna have to agree to disagree here. While I don't have much use for Gwen Stacy as Spider-Man's girlfriend (she was never in the picture in the first stuff I read), I think Stone was good casting if they were going to use Gwen. While one can complain about the writing of the character or the fact that she's not much like any version of Gwen Stacy (the character was primarily a composite of Ultimate Mary Jane with purely original material and Gwen's name and a rough approximation of her background), I think Stone was a good choice and really deserves most or all the credit for why the movie's take on the character was as well received as it was. I'm pretty sure that with a lesser actress, movie Gwen would not be so fondly remembered.

Also, not really sure about Stone not looking like Gwen. It was a pretty good likeness. Besides, with the characters drawn by different artists over the years, there's a decent amount of leeway for casting. It's not like Star Trek were William Shatner and Chris Pine look nothing alike and we suspend disbelief that they're playing the same character.

Well, dying is kind of the point of Gwen's character now. I think it would've worked better had they saved it for a later movie or done it earlier to allow more time for the fallout to be processed.

I'm not sure that the Raimi movies would've been grandfathered into the MCU. Also, personally, I think they stand better alone than part of a bigger series. Given that they were more character-centric than plot-driven, that almost seems to work better anyways.

Ironically, there was a plan to put the ASM Oscorp tower in The Avengers that fell apart due to technical issues, so there's actually a real possibility that the ASM movies might've wound up being grandfathered into the MCU instead of the Tom Holland reboot had things gone a little differently.

I do agree it's kind of ironic that after the MCU reboot, a lot of the praise for the ASM movies and Garfield's work kind of died away, a sort-of "the king is dead, long live the king" thing. Also, it seems like in the time between ASM1 and the making of ASM2 and the Spider-Man Cinematic Universe that was not to be, the opinion that the Raimi movies were never as good as we remembered (and were actually quite awful) became popular, but then swung back to "You know, they were actually pretty good and generally better than the ASM ones (at least the first two where, it seems like there's a lot of disagreement over whether SM3 or ASM2 are the worst movies in the franchise to date). Not sure if that all speaks to the fickleness of viewers or how perceptions change as time goes on.[/QUOTE]

 

Maybe this Venom character will be similarly discreet...

And, why hasn't SHIELD investigated Spidey? Hasn't he been operating for over a year now - six months before Civil War, which was last Spring? (Rhetorical question. First person to quote this and answer it loses five points.)

 

Kilgrave was an incredibly dangerous individual who could enslave any mind effortlessly and was responsible for countless deaths. He was a much bigger threat than some of the powered people SHIELD dealt with in the first season. As for the Hand, I'm not sure how far you've gotten in Iron Fist yet, and I'm not done yet myself, but let's just say that I get the impression they have some pretty large-scale plans.

Again, the fact that the character is written differently is not something to "complain" about in and of itself. Different is not wrong. A good adaptation can improve on the original, and Stone's Gwen definitely did.

That's just the problem -- they created a much more interesting version of Gwen, one that deserved better than to be fridged, but they still felt obliged to redo what the comics did just because it was expected. Writers should never limit themselves to what's expected.

The thing is, I always wanted to see an authentic dramatization of Gwen's death scene, because I thought it was so well-written, and it was frustrating that adaptations kept doing it with Mary Jane and had her not die. But not only did the version in ASM2 leave out my favorite parts of the death scene, but I realized that this version of Gwen had so much going for her that she deserved better.

Yeah, that was evidently the tentative plan, which they abandoned because of the disappointing performance of the ASM films. But I thought the Oscorp Tower thing fell through because of the timing -- the FX work was already too far along to include it.

 

Sure, but how overt were any of those?

How would S.H.I.E.L.D. know Kilgrave was taking control of people's minds and causing these deaths. The only people who knew were those who actually experienced it. For an outsider viewer, it may appear innocuous.

As for the Hand, granted I misspoke about them being small potatoes but would they really be of any interest for S.H.I.E.L.D.? The weird blood zombies would possibly be the only thing they might interested in, and aside from the incident at Mercy Hospital, that was kept under warps pretty quietly.

 

I don't see SHIELD going after drug traffickers and serial killers/stalkers.

 

Kilgrave kept a relatively low profile for someone with his powers. He knew that going for "The Big Score" would've brought too much attention to him....in fact, going for something more large-scale than his usual antics in Jessica Jones is ultimately what killed him. SHIELD may not have had enough reliable information to know Kilgrave was a real threat until Jessica already took care of him.

The Hand similarly keep things relatively small, at least so far. Possibly they might have some connections with Hydra to keep Government Agencies off their back.

 

Which comes back to my original point: Only Luke Cage publicly utilized his powers in a manner that would attract SHIELD's attention and that was the only time their absence stood out.

 

Look, I'm not saying it can't be justified. On the contrary, my point is that stories like these assume that the absence of other heroes to deal with the situation can be justified in a variety of ways. So I'm not interested in nitpicking the specifics of how any one instance can be justified. I'm just making the more general point that it's an accepted convention of the genre. Obviously one character's show needs to have that character solving their own problems instead of having a totally different character come in and do it for them. How that gets justified is negotiable.

 

They may very well have been observing him, but he was openly using his powers to do nothing but good and made himself totally available to anyone who asked so possibly they didn't think he was a threat that should be confronted.

 

True, although they should have approached him to sign the Sokovia Accords considering he's powered individual.

 

"You first."

 

Sure, I can see that, although I would contend that there's a point were a character is so different that it's the character in name only, and under said circumstances I wouldn't blame who wanted to see the original come to life being disappointed.

When we say "improve on the original," are we comparing movie Gwen to the 616 comics? I never read those, so I can't say which is better. However, my thing is that I think movie Gwen is a badly written character in and of herself, so saying that she's an improvement on previous versions isn't really saying that much.

What if they wanted to tell that story? It is about the only notable story Gwen has to her name.

Also, what more could they do with Gwen? She was a pretty static character and her only role in the story was to be Peter's girlfriend. Not really sure there was much new ground for her, or anything that another character couldn't have done instead.

To the best of my knowledge, rewriting the story as "The Night Mary Jane Watson Almost Died" happened three times: In the '90s cartoon, where MJ fell into a portal, with us only being told at the end of the series that Peter was going to find her and it would be okay; in the first Raimi movie, and in the Legacy story arc of the Ultimate Spider-Man comic series (in this one, Gwen's death was handled in the Carnage arc).

It's important to note that in those series, using Gwen wouldn't have worked; she wasn't a character in the cartoon, and both the Raimi trilogy and the Ultimate comics were partially built on the idea that Mary Jane was the love of Peter's life and had stolen his heart long before Gwen came into the picture. So, in those cases, with the idea of Green Goblin trying to murder Spider-Man's girlfriend being the general point of the story they were adapting, Mary Jane was the only viable candidate to be the one thrown off the bridge. (Even if they had used Gwen and it had been a fatality, because of the differences in character histories, it wouldn't have worked; Ultimate could not have done "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" because it and the 616 series were too different.)

As far as why they just didn't let Mary Jane die instead of changing the ending (esp. given that both versions of the character had adopted several of Gwen's traits, including being Peter's first serious girlfriend), that wasn't the story the movie and comic were telling (heck, both series ended with Peter and Mary Jane together). The story point of those adaptations was that Mary Jane could have died, not that she did. The Ultimate comics in particular ran with that, with the aftermath of the almost-tragedy fueling some stories later down the road as the couple had to work out some of the problems and repercussions that it wrought.

So, if you wanted to see a faithful adaptation, you would've needed a setting where

Which parts of the death scene did you miss?

Will have to disagree about Gwen being a character who should've lived, but, do you think that it was still the wrong call, given that ASM2 turned out to be the accidental end of the series?

They were seriously considering that? I didn't know that. Cool. Did you want it had happen? (I didn't, since I didn't like the series that much and, in hindsight, the Tom Holland reboot is proving to be great new take on the characters.)

Yeah, I think you're right, it was some sort of production thing (like how Hugh Jackman lost his Wolverine cameo in the first Spider-Man movie), not a falling out in the agreement.

 

Luke Cage was actually before Civil War, one scene had a date on it (when Luke throws a Cop onto his car and it gets taped) that showed the date on it and it was before Civil Wars' release date.

 

What I still find ironic about the public's reaction to Gwen Stacy's fate in "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" is that it seemed so hypocritical and fickle to me. After the release of 2012's "The Amazing Spider-Man", both the media and fans were anticipating Gwen's tragic fate for the second movie. A rumor was going around that director Marc Webb was considering Shailene Woodley for the role of Mary Jane Watson for both the second and third films. Yet, when Gwen met her fate in the 2014 film, many fans and a good deal of the media started accusing Marc Webb and the screenwriters of "fridging" Gwen and ending the movie on an anti-feminist note. Eventually, these same fans and the media accused the movie of bad writing. I have never witnessed such a hypocritical response to any Hollywood film than I did for "The Amazing Spider-Man 2".

 

They're just projecting their anger over the fact that Stone and Garfield were good on-screen and were enjoyable together instead of the usual "Placeholder Love Interest" stereotypes, so when she died they figured "Dammit, I got emotionally invested in this. What was the point if they were just going to kill her off like that?"

The point being to make the audience feel bad she was dead of course.

 

You'll need to show examples that prove it was all the same people.

 

But it doesn't have to be disappointing if the new version is worthwhile in its own right. That's the point. Fiction should give us the unexpected, the surprising. If it just slavishly copies something we've already experienced, what is the point of doing it at all? If the new version is objectively of lower quality than the old version, then there's cause for disappointment. But if it's different in a good way, then that's a good thing and it's self-defeating to close one's mind to it just because it's not what you expected. Bill Bixby's David Banner was barely the same character as Bruce Banner, but he was still a great character in his own right. Batman: The Animated Series's version of Mr. Freeze was radically different from previous versions, but was so brilliant that it replaced the previous version as the authoritative take on the character.

What was done before is merely the raw material for creating something new. A new character doesn't have to copy an older version of the character. What matters most is how good it is as its own independent thing. If it's not good on its own terms, then it doesn't matter how similar it is to its template. And if it's really good on its own terms, then it can transcend its template and deserve to exist independently of it, like Paul Dini's Mr. Freeze. What I'm saying is that I like Stone's Gwen so much as a character in her own right that I wish she hadn't been constrained by the expectations attached to an earlier incarnation. She deserved to transcend those roots.

The comics' Gwen had no role but to be Peter's girlfriend, because she was a character from an earlier era. ASM's Gwen was an independent protagonist and hero in her own right, and Spidey would've been lost without her brilliance and courage. She was much more than just the love interest, and that's why I found her a much more impressive character than the one she was based on.

The best part of the original was the dialogue -- Spidey's initial cocky self-congratulation when he thought he'd succeeded in saving her, then the denial and disbelief as he started to realize what had happened. "But I saved you!" That was poignant, inspired writing. It was the part I most wanted to see adapted, but they left it out completely. Also, related to that, there's the suggestion that her neck was snapped by the sudden deceleration, so that it's not immediately obvious what's happened. Having her head actually hit the ground didn't work as well for me.

That's an irrelevant consideration. What matters in writing a story is what works best in that story as its own entity. What it's based on from the past, what it's setting up in the future -- those are distractions, and prioritizing them above the needs of the story you're doing now leads to bad writing. The story needs to be true to itself in order to be its best. And as a character in her own right, independent of any other considerations, I think the Gwen Stacy played by Emma Stone deserved a better resolution to her story than the one she got.

I thought the movies were seriously flawed, but I liked Garfield's Spidey better than I like Holland's so far. I wouldn't have minded seeing him integrated into the MCU.

Hypocrisy is when you claim to believe one thing but act contrary to that claim at the same time. Fickleness means changing your mind for no good reason. Both are totally different things from sincerely, honestly changing your opinion in response to new information or experiences. As I said yesterday, I always wanted to see "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" adapted faithfully for the screen, but once it was actually done, I realized that it didn't really serve this new, richer version of Gwen that well. And yes, once I thought about it, I realized that the original comics story was an example of "fridging." It worked for what it was, as a product of its time, and it was a brilliantly written take on the formula, but it was still a dated approach to a female lead. And since the movie's version left out the best parts anyway, that made it unsatisfying, so in retrospect I would've been happier without it.

 

Well, audiences are fickle by definition; if it turns out they like something well enough, they can change their minds about what they wanted before.

To be frankly honest, I think fridging complaints miss the point that supporting characters are there to support the lead characters's stories first and foremost. If that meant Gwen needed to die, then that's what needed to happen.

Also, in my case, I was fully onboard for Gwen dying (that's really the defining trait of her character), and I don't like how it turned out because the story was botched. So, was it badly written? Yes, but not because they killed Gwen, but because the scene itself was badly written.

Fair enough. (In my case, it's so much the differences between the source material and the ASM movie characters that a problem -- I mean, I like the original movies' take and that's different from the comics -- but I didn't like the ASM movie's characterizations period in and of themselves.)

I honestly don't see what you see in the character, but fair enough.

I have to disagree about ASM movie Gwen and I'm basing my judgement on what the movies showed, not what the comics did. I think more character development would've helped, since to be she seemed like a plot device who's only function in the story was to advance Peter's story. (I mean, nothing she does or happens in the movie is really about her; it's all about what that does to Peter. Yes, I did say previous that that's the first function of a supporting character, but the best ones also transcend that role; in my opinion, Stone's Gwen did not. IMHO, she's one of the worst supporting love interests in the genre to date, but your mileage may vary.)

That does seem to be an element that is lost in imitation; when the Ultimate comics did their take on the bridge story, Spider-Man's attitude after saving Mary Jane (but before knowing for sure if she was still alive) wasn't: "Yay, I saved the day," but: "Are you with me? Please be alive."

I would speculate that the original cockier setup worked because the original story was such a surprise (superheroes didn't fail like this). Now, whenever they re-tell or reimagine this story, the big question the fans have is: "Will they actually pull the trigger this time?" In each case, Spidey's responses seem to echo what the readers/viewers are thinking.

Yeah, that was a problem. It kind of felt like the moviemakers wanted to have it where it wasn't Spider-Man's fault, despite part of the reason the original story was so tragic was because of how he mistake was part of the reason she died.

Then how does planning for the future, so you don't write yourself into a corner work (esp. for something like a movie that's in the middle of a planned series)?

(Also, judging from rumors, there was a possibility that Gwen's story wasn't intended to be over after ASM2.)

Okay.

 

Thank you!