Spider-Man: Homecoming' anticipation thread

[Reverend]

Oh, I like the fact that Uncle Ben showed that principle to Peter through his actions rather than just saying the words. People get too hung up on the line itself; the words aren't as important as the idea. It wasn't even originally Uncle Ben's line -- it was the last line of the narration in the original story, summing up the lesson Peter learned from Uncle Ben's death and his failure to stop the burglar who later killed Ben. So whether or not Ben actually said the words is trivial next to that. The actual phrase itself didn't start getting repeated in the comics until the '80s, so it's not like it's some indispensable catchphrase. And it wasn't attributed to Ben in the comics until 1987, although an audio story on a record album had done so 15 years earlier: http://www.cbr.com/when-we-first-me...-with-great-power-comes-great-responsibility/

Like i said, I only saw like 20-30 minutes before getting bored and changing channel, so I don't have a fully formed opinion.
All I know is there was this scene with Sheen who was clearly supposed to be giving Peter the "with great power..." speech, but phrased slightly differently and it was painfully obvious what they were doing and it just felt awkward as all hell. There's a reason that phrase exists: it has an eloquence to it that sums up a whole philosophy in a single sentence.
Now you can show instead of say, sure, but you can't explain it differently and expect to have the same effect. It just makes it feel ironically derivative.

 

[Christopher]

There's a reason that phrase exists: it has an eloquence to it that sums up a whole philosophy in a single sentence.
Now you can show instead of say, sure, but you can't explain it differently and expect to have the same effect. It just makes it feel ironically derivative.

The point, though, is that it's not about the words. Peter doesn't learn the lesson from the words, regardless of how they're phrased. He learns the lesson from the fact that he chose not to stop the burglar who went on to kill Uncle Ben. The words are not just some hero catchphrase like "This looks like a job for Superman" -- they're a summation of Peter Parker's profound guilt at the consequences of his selfishness, and his commitment to atone for that guilt by never again shirking his responsibility to others. So what Ben says or doesn't say is beside the point. All that matters is what Peter learns from his own culpability in Ben's death.

Too many fans today are fixated on the exact words at the expense of their real meaning, and that diminishes it. It takes something powerful and reduces it to a mere catchphrase, surface over substance.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Is that supposed to be a squirrel suit made of web? If so, how on Earth is is supposed to work considering it's made of web and thus 99.9% gaps of air to pass through??

 

[Christopher]

Is that supposed to be a squirrel suit made of web? If so, how on Earth is is supposed to work considering it's made of web and thus 99.9% gaps of air to pass through??

In the movie clip, the gliding membranes are clear, translucent sheets that are just decorated with a printed-on web pattern. They're not "made of web," they're made of some advanced Stark-tech material.

In the original comics, the underarm webbing was purely decorative and never used for gliding: http://www.cbr.com/what-purpose-did-spider-mans-underarm-webbing-serve/

 

[Captaindemotion]

I like the first two Raimi films the best, I guess, but I think the other three aren't as bad as their reputations. Although my feelings about ASM2 are quite mixed. It got Peter/Spidey more right than any other movie including Civil War, and it handled Gwen and Aunt May very well too, but it badly bungled everything else -- like the plot, the villains, etc.

I actually like the leads better in the Webb movies. Tobey Maguire is fine, but he wasn't really playing Peter Parker; rather, they changed Peter Parker to be more like Tobey Maguire. I feel Garfield was a better fit to the character. And though I didn't mind Kirsten Dunst's MJ (despite her having little in common with her comics counterpart), Emma Stone's Gwen was just fantastic, far more interesting than the character she was based on.

Christopher has very helpfully summarised my exact feelings too. Thank you.

A friend of mine commented when I posted the trailer on Facebook "how many spider-man films does the world need?" But it's been, what, 12 years or so since we last got a really good one (Spider-man 2), just 3 flawed films in the interim. So I'm more than ready for this.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

The point, though, is that it's not about the words. Peter doesn't learn the lesson from the words, regardless of how they're phrased. He learns the lesson from the fact that he chose not to stop the burglar who went on to kill Uncle Ben. The words are not just some hero catchphrase like "This looks like a job for Superman" -- they're a summation of Peter Parker's profound guilt at the consequences of his selfishness, and his commitment to atone for that guilt by never again shirking his responsibility to others. So what Ben says or doesn't say is beside the point. All that matters is what Peter learns from his own culpability in Ben's death.

It's been a bit since I read Amazing Fantasy #15, but I don't even think Uncle Ben actually said it in that story. My memory is it's the narrator that says it at the end. Regardless, the words aren't literally "with great power comes great responsibility," but "with great power there must also come great responsibility." Not functionally different, but it shows that it's not the precise words that matter.

 

[Tosk]

It may have taken a while, but as far as the comics are now concerned it was something Ben said to Peter.

Or should we start being annoyed that Superman can fly now when he couldn't originally?

 

[ITL]

A quick Googling turns up this:

 

[The Nth Doctor]

A friend of mine commented when I posted the trailer on Facebook "how many spider-man films does the world need?" But it's been, what, 12 years or so since we last got a really good one (Spider-man 2), just 3 flawed films in the interim. So I'm more than ready for this.

I would say we haven't had a good one yet, just films with some good elements. But, as already established, I'm a curmudgeon Spidey purist, so what do I know?

 

[Christopher]

It's been a bit since I read Amazing Fantasy #15, but I don't even think Uncle Ben actually said it in that story. My memory is it's the narrator that says it at the end.

Yes, I already said that, and linked to an article discussing it. The first thing that attributed the line to Ben was a record album in 1972; the first comic book to do so was published in 1987. And the exact phrase wasn't really used much in the comics, if at all, between 1961 and 1980. It's one of those things that later generations of fans-turned-creators keep referencing out of nostalgia even though it was hardly ever used by the first generation of creators.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

It may have taken a while, but as far as the comics are now concerned it was something Ben said to Peter.

Sure, but it doesn't have to be something specifically said on screen in a movie. The problem you run into is the audience is used to it being a catchphrase. As a catchphrase, it loses some of its meaning. If you rephrase it in a different way, they'll be forced to listen to what the words mean, not the words as said.

 

[DigificWriter]

The idea that Ben's last words to Peter were a trite "catchphrase" is the Spider-Man equivalent of Chris Farley's mocking/satirical misquoting of Darth Vader's words when he reveals the truth about his own identity to Luke. It's a misconception that's unfortunately become part of the "mental furniture" of popular culture, which is sad.

 

[Christopher]

The idea that Ben's last words to Peter were a trite "catchphrase" is the Spider-Man equivalent of Chris Farley's mocking/satirical misquoting of Darth Vader's words when he reveals the truth about his own identity to Luke. It's a misconception that's unfortunately become part of the "mental furniture" of popular culture, which is sad.

They were never Ben's last words to Peter. Again, the phrase was never canonically attributed to Ben at all in the first quarter-century of the comic, and in most versions since, it's been something that Ben taught Peter sometime in his childhood, or something that he liked to say from time to time. The closest it's been to being Ben's last words to Peter, as far as I know, was in the Raimi movie, where he said the line during their last full conversation, but it was midway through their talk. Ben's last line in that scene was "I'll pick you up here at ten," and his last words before his death were "Peter, Peter." (In the comics, Peter wasn't there when Ben died, so he never heard Ben's last words.)

And again, the important thing is not that Ben says the words. He doesn't have to say them at all. The pivotal moment that the words represent is not anything Ben said or did, it's the moment when Spider-Man chose not to use his power to stop the burglar because he didn't think it was his responsibility. And that shirking of responsibility led to Ben's death. Actually having that lesson be something Ben says is rather hokey; it's way too coincidental that his favorite aphorism should just happen to be the very lesson his nephew will learn from his death. It'd be as if Thomas Wayne's favorite saying had been "Be careful walking down the street at night." I'd honestly prefer it if the line had never been attributed to Ben at all, if it had been Peter's words in describing the lesson he'd learned from his failure to act.

 

[Reverend]

OK, once again the wrong end of the stick has been firmly grasped and run off with with righteous abandon!

I wasn't criticising the reboot for specifically *not* using Uncle Ben's speech, just that their attempt to do the equivalent scene felt very clunky and awkward. It was indeed blindingly obvious that the screen writer was 1) very much aware of those words and 2) hopping around in a desperate attempt to try and say it while avoiding actually using those exact words, in a way that brings to mind the prose equivalent of traversing a minefield on a pogo stick. Or that bit in 'As Goods as It Gets' where Jack Nicholson has to walk down a street without stepping on any cracks.

The point is it wasn't graceful and made much more of a meal of it than it needed to. Say the words. Don't say the words. Either way I don't care. All that matters is that they way they did it made it feel less of an re-adaptation of the material and more like plagiarism, which is just bizarre.

Imagine if one were to do an adaptation of Hamlet and instead of just straight-up using the "to be or not to be" soliloquy or finding a means to convey the thrust of that scene in a new and interesting way, a writer instead opts to write a nearly identical scene and just changed the word of the phrase around to something like: "The question is something may not be a thing, unless on the other hand it could be a thing. Oh hey Yorik!"
That's the impression I was left with, Clumsy. Cack-handed. Creatively torpid and uninspired. Amateurish even.

I'm not saying that's what turned me off (I think I made it to just after they killed Michael Sheen) but that's the only part that really stuck in my memory.

 

[Christopher]

I wasn't criticising the reboot for specifically *not* using Uncle Ben's speech, just that their attempt to do the equivalent scene felt very clunky and awkward. It was indeed blindingly obvious that the screen writer was 1) very much aware of those words and 2) hopping around in a desperate attempt to try and say it while avoiding actually using those exact words, in a way that brings to mind the prose equivalent of traversing a minefield on a pogo stick. Or that bit in 'As Goods as It Gets' where Jack Nicholson has to walk down a street without stepping on any cracks.

Yeah, I get that that's what you meant, but I'm trying to offer a different way of looking at it: What matters isn't what Ben said in that scene, but what he did in a different scene. In the scene in the convenience store, Ben's actions conveyed the message better than any words.

Besides, Civil War did the same thing you're talking about, tiptoeing around the words without actually saying them. In Peter's scene with Tony, he said something about how if you have the power to stop something and you don't, then it's kind of your fault, or something like that. So I'm wondering if you have a similar problem with that scene too.

Imagine if one were to do an adaptation of Hamlet and instead of just straight-up using the "to be or not to be" soliloquy or finding a means to convey the thrust of that scene in a new and interesting way, a writer instead opts to write a nearly identical scene and just changed the word of the phrase around to something like: "The question is something may not be a thing, unless on the other hand it could be a thing. Oh hey Yorik!"

I don't think that's a good comparison, because Shakespeare is so much about the actual words, which isn't as much the case with an adaptation of an ongoing series. With a movie based on a whole series, it's not so important to re-enact exact lines and scenes as to construct a story that distills the basic ideas.

Besides, there have been non-verbatim Shakespeare interpretations that have been pretty well-regarded -- Forbidden Planet, West Side Story, Throne of Blood, Ran, etc. There's a difference between doing a new performance of a play and doing an adaptation of its underlying idea.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

It's not about changing the words. It's about doing things well (your Civil War example) and doing things worse, like with the more clunky dialogue of Amazing Spider-Man.

Sometimes it's about the script, sometimes the acting, whatever it is, sometimes things just don't work as intended.

 

[Captaindemotion]

I agree with Reverend. I don't hate TASM, I enjoyed much of it, but very often during it, I kept thinking of the times at school when you copied a friend's homework but re-wrote it, hoping that the slightly different wording you used would be enough to fool the teachers.

 

[Grendelsbayne]

I would say we haven't had a good one yet, just films with some good elements. But, as already established, I'm a curmudgeon Spidey purist, so what do I know?

I'm not a purist at all, but I'd say the same. I really hated the casting and the tone of the Raimi films. I still find it ironic that the so lauded Spider-man 2 is such a completely dead film, imo (due to a painfully uncharacteristically wooden performance from Alfred Molina, who was basically the only person in the movie who even had a chance of being entertaining), while the constantly derided Spider-man 3 is the only one I can actually rewatch (despite the horror that was Topher Grace and Emo Maguire), since at least Sandman was sympathetic and Harry's story had a decent ending.

Meanwhile, I loved Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone, but the first ASM was already suffering in the writing dept. in regards to Peter's parents and to the Lizard, and ASM 2 (even though it had some incredible movie moments in it) just fell completely flat on its face.

 

[DigificWriter]

I personally love all five of the previous Spider-Man films (although TASM2 and SM2 are my top two favorites), and still consider the decision to make the deal with Marvel to be an unnecessary one that robbed us of the opportunity to see the TASM series continued.

I also just recently bought the TASM films and intend to, at some point, (hopefully soon) get the Raimi Trilogy on Blu-ray as well so that I have both Spider-Man filmic universes in my collection and can at least watch something featuring the character when the mood strikes me since, unless something changes, I most likely won't purchase any of the MCU films featuring him.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

^^
Why don't you think you'll like Homecoming?

The decision to rob the Garfield movie fans of another entry was no different than the decision to rob the Raimi movie fans of another entry as well. It's all a business that we can't control and just how things work.