I literally got a pop up news article notification from Google on my phone yesterday that had a headline which spoiled Hawkeye
Spoilers Spider-man 3(take 2) Anticipation thread
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I literally got a pop up news article notification from Google on my phone yesterday that had a headline which spoiled Hawkeye
I've already gotten so many No Way Home spoilers that I don't even know if I'm still going to bother with the movie theater.
Honestly, this is part of what draws me to Ben Reilly as a character. All of this, plus the existential angst of whether he even has a right to exist or to have a life of his own in light of his creation.
The catharsis for the character during the brief period when he believed he was the original Peter and became Sensational Spider-man was so freeing and you really felt it in the way he was portrayed. Which ultimately makes the tragedy that much more powerful when Marvel editorial did the about face and brought Peter back.
Marvel hasn't quite found the sweet spot since they brought the character back. The current Beyond arc is solid, and I dig the voice they are giving Ben, but it doesn't quite resonate for me in the same way. Or maybe I've just changed so much in the 25 years since that it doesn't hit the same way. Either way, it's so close but not quite.
Horner’s score on TAS 1 was waaaay better than the stuff Zimmer sneezed out for TAS 2
So I managed to avoid any detailed spoilers (I had a few general ideas, but that's it). My wife, however, looked up a plot breakdown because she was having anxiety and didn't want any surprises. She still seemed to enjoy the movie a lot. I would suggest it's not a movie that relies on cheap surprises at all and would still be worth watching.
That was the Raimi version--he constantly doubted himself, did not have rich daddy figures to look up to / fanboy over, and largely suffered under the weight of his problems. Even the end of 3 was not conclusive about the strength of his relationship with Mary Jane. The Raimi version was the one that mirrored the characterization of the Lee/Romita/Conway periods--and Marvel comics in general more than any Marvel-based film of this century. ...and that cannot be said of any other post-Raimi filmed versions of Spider-Man.
You've made me want to re-watch ASM, and actually watch ASM2, which I refused to see because I LOVED Emma's Gwen and didn't want to see her get killed off.Andrew Garfield's Amazing Spider-Man duology.
As a whole, I liked these more than the Raimi films as a whole. I was more engaged by the films, the actors, the cinematography and direction. Andrew Garfield is a compelling performer who demands you watch him and everyone and everything around him. I liked his take on Peter Parker, a broken young man who's bitter about being abandoned by his parents as a child and haunted by the deaths of Uncle Ben and Captain Stacy, who loses himself in the Spider-Man persona to become someone else without all of his baggage. Emma Stone's Gwen Stacy was a fascinating character in her own right, and, even though it's a bit CW-esque, I liked how Peter and Gwen became a bit of a team; Peter's a genius (which is something the Raimi trilogy kept telling us but never bothered to actually show), and Gwen's just a hair smarter and gives him a second set of eyes. There are also nice supporting turns by Sally Field, Denis Leary, and Martin Sheen.
The problem with these films, though, is in the story being told and the premise that underlies that story, namely that Peter Parker is (unintentionally) at the center of a power struggle over the secret research his father was engaged in when he was a child. That's a fascinating idea. It riffs off the old comics chestnut, "Everything you thought you knew is wrong!" I bought it into completely. But I'm not sure it's a Spider-Man story. Heck, the second half of ASM is a loose adaptation of Batman Year One! I could see the story working better as a television series -- heck, there's enough cut footage from both films that Marc Webb could do a Zack Snyder's Justice League with the material -- than as a biennial blockbuster film series.
(A related problem is Sony's desire to build a whole cinematic universe around this, which comes close to overwhelming the second film, though I think the Orci/Kurtzman script with its trademark multiple climaxes is a bigger issue there. See also, Star Trek Into Darkness which, like ASM2, ends... and then keeps going.)
The Lizard's scheme in the first film -- "I've turned myself into a monster, so I'm going to turn all of Manhattan into monsters, too!" -- was dumb. And the absence of Rhys Ifans as Connors in Richard Parker's videos in the second film was noticeable, given the lengths the first film went to establish that Connors and Parker had been colleagues. (I thought it was a nice touch that Parker, not Connors, was the brains of the operation; Parker got the cross-species transfer to work, but Connors wasn't smart enough to recreate the work.)
The second film... I'm going to be a bit forgiving of Dane DeHaan's Harry Osborn as his performance reminded me of my best friend, who died fifteen years ago of a brian aneurysm. I wish the film hadn't crammed his introduction, backstory, and transformation into the Goblin into two hours, yet I understand why it was there. (The script is pretty mechanical in how it goes about things.) I wish the film had used the time instead on Max/Electro, who goes from an interesting figure in the first hour of the film to nothing more than muscle/lackey in the last half. There's so much going on in this film that nothing has time to breathe. It worked for me, it paid things off that it set up earlier in the film (Gwen's speech, the Russian terrorists, the little boy with the handmade windmill, which reminded me of the little girl with the glasses in V for Vendetta), but I can understand why it didn't for most people. Who really wants to see Spider-Man in a conspiracy/business thriller where a major plotline is about who controls Oscorp and its secret facility?
Overall, I feel these films tried to give Peter Parker psychological depth that the Raimi films did not, though perhaps they went too far in the direction of making Peter dark and embittered. I think it's a valid take on the character, though, more interesting than simply continuing Tobey Maguire's characterization (which is what I thought at the time Sony should have done, just recast like a James Bond film and continue), and I would have been interested to see what Garfield would have done with the role in a subsequent film.
I liked these films. I found a genuine emotional core in them, and they were effective for me in that regard. I know that opinion on the Garfield duology is out of the mainstream. And that's okay.
Uhhhh… that’s not exactly the way to sell that to someone who loves the character…
I didn't rewatch the Webb films before seeing No Way Home -- they're fresher, I guess, even though Homecoming is coming up on its fifth anniversary this summer -- so I rewatched Spider-Man: Homecoming last night. I didn't have it on DVD and found it at a charity shop a few days ago, along with High Fidelity (one of the first DVDs I owned, and which I traded it at EB Games long, long ago) and Brideshead Revisited (the Jeremy Irons series, not the Matthew Goode/Ben Whishaw/Hayley Atwell film).
Honestly, I wished I'd watched either High Fidelity or Bridehead Revisited than Spider-Man: Homecoming.
It's not a bad film. It's competently made. The performances are fine. The script mostly works, though sometimes it feels like it tries too hard to be a Spider-Man film in a universe where there are heroes other than Spider-Man. The more ground-level view of things, like the Daredevil show, really makes this stand out in the MCU.
But. But.
it's a YA Spider-Man film.
I don't mean the high school setting. Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield both started out their Spidey careers in high school. That's not what I mean. I mean the tone of the piece. It feels like it's targeted at a teenage audience in ways that preceding Spider-Man films were not, and I found that offputting. Weirdly, I think I might have liked the film more had Peter continued with his video diary and we'd seen more of the film in that way.
It also didn't help Homecoming that I found most of the major characters pretty unlikeable. (The major exceptions are Ned, who's pretty much a delight the whole film, and May, who's just sorta there.) Peter's kinda entitled, he's smart but not bright, and he does show some growth over the film. He has to -- he has to overcome the idiot plot and the other idiot characters, notably Happy.
By idiot plot, I mean this -- had anyone actually talked to the other characters at any point, the Vulture's criminal syndicate would have been stopped with far less carnage. I think Tony's call to Peter, when Peter had ditched school to get to the ferry, was an attempt by Tony to bring Peter into the loop, but that assumes that Happy was listening to anything Peter was trying to tell him throughout the film, and there's no real indication that Happy was listening to Peter. My impression of Happy is that he saw Peter as one of Tony's pet projects that he (Happy) wasn't interested in, wanted no part of, and resented that Tony was making him be the point man on the project. If Happy hadn't been such a dick to Peter, then a lot of what happens in the film wouldn't happen. You can make the argument that Happy is the real antagonist of Homecoming.
I don't think the National Park Service would have shoot-to-kill orders if a costumed man is atop the Washington Monument. They certainly weren't going to fire a tranq dart; a fall from that height would have been deadly. The setpiece in general was fine, but the NPS helicopter was an unnecessary complication.
I was really conscious of watching of a film. I had thoughts like "Oh, they had RDJ on set for a week" and "Oh, they had Zendaya for a week." I still can't believe that RDJ and Keaton didn't share a single scene. I would have replaced Tyne Daly with RDJ for that opening scene of the salvage operation.
If you like Homecoming, I'm not trying to take anything away from you. It gets to do things no other Spider-Man film could do, show Spider-Man in a universe where there are other super-heroes and remain largely a Spider-Man film. It wasn't Iron Man 4 like a lot of skeptics thought from the first trailers. (RDJ is in what, like ten minutes of the film?) it's entertaining, and I think Michael Keaton really elevates the thing. But it's not really my sort of thing, and I'm glad I didn't spend more than a couple of bucks on the DVD, because I probably won't watch it again.
Honestly, I wished I'd watched either High Fidelity or Bridehead Revisited than Spider-Man: Homecoming.
It's not a bad film. It's competently made. The performances are fine. The script mostly works, though sometimes it feels like it tries too hard to be a Spider-Man film in a universe where there are heroes other than Spider-Man. The more ground-level view of things, like the Daredevil show, really makes this stand out in the MCU.
But. But.
it's a YA Spider-Man film.
I don't mean the high school setting. Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield both started out their Spidey careers in high school. That's not what I mean. I mean the tone of the piece. It feels like it's targeted at a teenage audience in ways that preceding Spider-Man films were not, and I found that offputting. Weirdly, I think I might have liked the film more had Peter continued with his video diary and we'd seen more of the film in that way.
It also didn't help Homecoming that I found most of the major characters pretty unlikeable. (The major exceptions are Ned, who's pretty much a delight the whole film, and May, who's just sorta there.) Peter's kinda entitled, he's smart but not bright, and he does show some growth over the film. He has to -- he has to overcome the idiot plot and the other idiot characters, notably Happy.
By idiot plot, I mean this -- had anyone actually talked to the other characters at any point, the Vulture's criminal syndicate would have been stopped with far less carnage. I think Tony's call to Peter, when Peter had ditched school to get to the ferry, was an attempt by Tony to bring Peter into the loop, but that assumes that Happy was listening to anything Peter was trying to tell him throughout the film, and there's no real indication that Happy was listening to Peter. My impression of Happy is that he saw Peter as one of Tony's pet projects that he (Happy) wasn't interested in, wanted no part of, and resented that Tony was making him be the point man on the project. If Happy hadn't been such a dick to Peter, then a lot of what happens in the film wouldn't happen. You can make the argument that Happy is the real antagonist of Homecoming.
I don't think the National Park Service would have shoot-to-kill orders if a costumed man is atop the Washington Monument. They certainly weren't going to fire a tranq dart; a fall from that height would have been deadly. The setpiece in general was fine, but the NPS helicopter was an unnecessary complication.
I was really conscious of watching of a film. I had thoughts like "Oh, they had RDJ on set for a week" and "Oh, they had Zendaya for a week." I still can't believe that RDJ and Keaton didn't share a single scene. I would have replaced Tyne Daly with RDJ for that opening scene of the salvage operation.
If you like Homecoming, I'm not trying to take anything away from you. It gets to do things no other Spider-Man film could do, show Spider-Man in a universe where there are other super-heroes and remain largely a Spider-Man film. It wasn't Iron Man 4 like a lot of skeptics thought from the first trailers. (RDJ is in what, like ten minutes of the film?) it's entertaining, and I think Michael Keaton really elevates the thing. But it's not really my sort of thing, and I'm glad I didn't spend more than a couple of bucks on the DVD, because I probably won't watch it again.
I personally consider Homecoming and Far from Home two of only four MCU films that I don't like (with Ant-Man & The Wasp and Eternals being the other two). I mean, they're still a thousand times better then the Amazing films, but I could never get into them.
No Way Home on the other hand I really enjoyed, probably because all the High School stuff (which I thought was the weakest point of the first two films) was officially over, and all the different characters that come into the film were very good.
No Way Home on the other hand I really enjoyed, probably because all the High School stuff (which I thought was the weakest point of the first two films) was officially over, and all the different characters that come into the film were very good.
Very, which is pretty untrue to the comic book character.
Minimal, and yes he would have to have some in order to participate in the climax at all.
The only characters I liked were Liz and May.
Tony himself directly being an ass to Toomes would have been better though it would have made it more disappointing that Peter never said to him you kind of were at fault or at least you didn't handle it well.
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@Allyn Gibson Your review pretty much sums up my whole feeling about it too.
But 'No Way Home' is the first MCU Spiderman that felt like it was closer to a regular Spiderman movie.
That was the big take away I had with it. Especially after 'Far From Home' I felt like I'm not the audience for this movie and it definitely appeals to a different crowd. I preferred how the Russo Brothers handled Spiderman.
But 'No Way Home' is the first MCU Spiderman that felt like it was closer to a regular Spiderman movie.
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